Rendezvous With God (Rabbi Nathan Laufer)

In this wondrous book, Nathan Laufer gives us a stunningly fresh reading of
the biblical holidays, illustrating how they celebrate the seven revelations of
the Divine Presence during the first year of the marriage of God and Israel.
A remarkable tour de force, Rendezvous with God weaves together thousands
of biblical rituals with later rabbinic ordinances and popular holiday customs
into a seamless whole, inseparably uniting Judaisms ethical and ritual dimensions. The book is so rich, it will provide understanding and pleasure to every
kind of reader from the wise, informed expert to the unlearned lay reader.
Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg
President Emeritus, clal
Nathan Laufer is the master teacher of Jewish holidays. Rendezvous with God
is in actuality a rendezvous with all the biblical holidays by a teacher who is
able to make complex issues clear and guide us to making our holidays what
they are supposed to be holy.
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin
Author of Jewish Literacy, Rebbe, and Why the Jews?
It is no small challenge to write yet another book about the Jewish holidays
which says something new. But Nathan Laufer more than meets this challenge. His notion that the holidays represent different stages of the courtship
between God and the Jewish people is a new prism both fascinating and
revelatory through which to view the Jewish holiday cycle. Those who
have been observing the holidays for many years, as well as those who are
new to them, will emerge from Rendezvous with God inspired and challenged.
Rabbi Dr. Daniel Gordis
Koret Distinguished Fellow, Shalem College
Nathan Laufer brings the Jewish calendar year into a rich and meaningsaturated alignment. He demonstrates how the holiday cycle proclaims our
origin story and its values, helping us relive and affirm it annually. We thank
him for adding greater depth to our already sacred sense of time.
Dr. Erica Brown
Author of Take Your Soul to Work
Nathan Laufer has written a unique eye-opening and soul-revealing exploration into our festivals, immeasurably enhancing the quality of how we relate
to our Jewish calendar and its holy commemorative days. Rendezvous with
God demonstrates how the festivals express the Jewish romance with the
Divine, stressing the marvelous interplay between sanctity of space and
sanctity of time, the exquisite dance of the ethical and the ritual. A critical
study for anyone who wishes to experience our tradition in an authentically
profound and spiritually moving way.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin
Chancellor, Ohr Torah Stone
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An important book, a work of exceptional depth, spirit, and faith. Rabbi

Nathan Laufer argues that our collective identity and purpose as a people
are determined by the stories we tell about ourselves. As Jews, the carriers
of our foundational stories are our holidays. Through innovative and precise exegeses, Laufer weaves a comprehensive new narrative for our core
holidays, offering an inspiring vision for the raison dtre of Jewish life. An
essential addition to every reading list.
Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman
President, Shalom Hartman Institute
Addressing the mind as well as the heart, this book offers new and startling
interpretations of the textual and lived fabric of the Jewish holidays. It is written with such clarity and vigor that it will appeal to educators, religious leaders,
and anyone interested in the rendezvous between texts, thought, and ritual.
Rabbi Professor Elie Holzer
Bar-Ilan University
Rendezvous with God is a cause for celebration in the field of Jewish education. The book succeeds with impressive textual knowledge and profound
educational wisdom tobuild a spectacular bridge between the biblical
canon, the sacred times and spaces of Jewish tradition, Jewish law, and
contemporary Jewish values. All this Rabbi Laufer does in an enlightening, accessible, and superbly written style. An outstanding contribution to
Jewish educational discourse in our day.
Dr. Avinoam Rosenak
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Rendezvous with God takes us on a new and original journey through the
otherwise familiar Jewish calendar. Working from a broad biblical perspective and within the traditional framing of the Jewish holidays, Laufer
illuminates well-known verses in a surprising new light. This book offers
a novel and creative understanding of the holidays which will accompany
the reader in his celebrations throughout the Jewish year.
Professor Jonathan Grossman
Bar-Ilan University
In this gracefully written and accessible volume, Rabbi Nathan Laufer
astutely guides readers through the Jewish liturgical year. Exploring each
holiday in turn, he weaves together classical wisdom with often arresting
new insights. Whether youve been observing the holidays your whole life
or youre discovering them for the first time, this book will make an inspiring and enlightening companion.
Rabbi Shai Held
Co-Founder and Dean, Mechon Hadar
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Rendezvous with God

Revealing the Meaning
of the
Jewish Holidays
and Their
Mysterious Rituals
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Rabbi Nathan Laufer
Maggid Books
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Rendezvous with God

Revealing the Meaning of the
Jewish Holidays and Their Mysterious Rituals
First Edition, 2016
Maggid Books
An imprint of Koren Publishers Jerusalem Ltd.
POB 8531, New Milford, CT 06776-8531, USA
& POB 4044, Jerusalem 9104001, Israel
www.maggidbooks.com
Nathan Laufer 2016
The publication of this book was made possible
through the generous support of Torah Education in Israel.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher, except in the case
of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
isbn 978-1-59264-455-1, hardcover
A cip catalogue record for this title is
available from the British Library
Printed and bound in the United States
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As for Me, this is My covenantsays the EverPresent

God: My spirit that is in you and My words that I
have placed in your mouth will not depart from your
mouth, or from the mouth of your children, or from the
mouth of their descendantsfrom now and forever.
Isaiah 59:21
To my
children, their spouses
and all of their descendants
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Contents
Prefacexi
Introduction: The Jewish Peoples
Founding Story xix
Passover: Leaving Egypt 1
Not by Bread Alone: Counting the Omer, Celebrating Shavuot 45
Rosh HaShana: Remembering the Forgotten Day 77
Yom Kippur: Return and Forgiveness 113
Living With God: Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, and Simat Torah 163
The Sacred Space-Time Continuum 203
Shabbat: The Purpose of Creating Heaven and Earth 225
The Hiddenness of God: Rabbinic and Modern Holidays 251
God, Torah, and the Holidays 263
Index 271
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Preface
hildren want to know from where they come. During the

holidays, when our family gathers around the dining room table to celebrate, conversation sooner or later goes back to our past; sometimes our
peoples past, and sometimes our familys past. From time to time, the
children will ask, and my wife and I will retell our little familys founding story: how we met (we were set up by her former boss while I was
interviewing for a job); the tale of our first date together (in the midst of
a passing snowstorm at the end of March); my first gift to her (a lithoprint of Psalm 23 to console her for the untimely loss of her father); the
night of our engagement (after reading the Book of Esther in synagogue
on the moonlit night of Purim); the day and place of our wedding (on my
grandfathers yahrzeit in a community close to where our children grew
up); our honeymoon (in Jerusalem and Netanya); the first home that we
established together (a parsonage in Belleville, New Jersey, where I held
a weekend pulpit); and the first meal that I cooked for her (she was very
impressed!). Every detail is important, as it makes real for the children
our origins as a loving, protective family. Within those stories are buried
the deepest secrets of our collective being, the foundations for why we
were initially attracted to each other, why we committed ourselves to
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Rendezvous with God

each other, and why we chose to bring our children into the world and
build a family together.
The human desire to know and understand the meaning of ones
origins is a deep need not only of children but also of nations. Every
nation has its founding story that is retold through its national holidays.
In the United States, the holidays of Thanksgiving, Independence Day,
Presidents Day, and Veterans and Memorial Day are all days on which
the American story is retold and commemorated. In the modern State
of Israel, Yom HaShoa, Yom HaZikaron, Yom HaAtzmaut, and Yom
Yerushalayim are the days that retell the founding and history of the
modern nation-state of Israel.1
The idea at the heart of this book is that for the Jewish people,
the biblical holidays of Passover, Shavuot, Rosh HaShana, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot retell the founding stories of the relationship between
God and the Jewish people in their honeymoon year together as a
couple. Like the stories of our familys coming together, those stories
contain within them the deepest secrets of our peoples existence and
our raison dtre, our collective purpose. These holidays are the central
vehicle through which we make our peoples narrative come alive and
stay vibrant year after year.
1. Each nations holidays commemorate and give expression to a formative event in

the life of the nation. To take two examples from each nation: In the United States,
Thanksgiving recalls the Pilgrims valiant voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to achieve
religious liberty, and reenacts the meal of thanksgiving for having arrived and survived the first year in the New World. July Fourth celebrates the victory in the War
of Independence against the British (the fireworks celebrate the bombs bursting
in air that accompanied the victory in 1776 no less than in 1812), and the achievement of political freedom. In Israel, Yom HaShoa commemorates the Holocaust of
six million Jews from 1933 to 1945, through memorial ceremonies that include the
lighting of six torches for the six million Jews who perished. Yom HaAtzmaut, which
marks the achievement of Israeli sovereignty and political independence in 1948, is
celebrated through the national pastime of outdoor barbecues, the awarding of the
Israel Prize for outstanding national achievements, and a song and dance extravaganza,
among other things. In short, each holiday is inextricably linked to a historical event
with deep roots in the nations memory, which is then reenacted and celebrated or
commemorated.
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Preface
The holidays, then, comprise not merely a series of fragmented,
ritual acts we perform by rote at different times of the yearblowing
the shofar, building a sukka, waving the palm branch and citron, leading
the Passover Seder, or staying up to study Torah all night. All of these
activities are enjoyable and significant, but not, as I will argue, ends in
themselves. Nor are the many biblical and liturgical texts that we read
and recite as a matter of tradition during the festivalsthe Akeda on
Rosh HaShana, the Temple service on Yom Kippur, the Hallel on Sukkot, and the Haggada on Passover. The significance of all these rituals, readings, and liturgies lies in the foundational stories they retell in
dramatic fashion about our relationship with God, about who we are
as a people, and about our purpose in life and history. Each individual
holiday encourages us to relive a part of the storytaking us back to a
particular foundational moment in our birth, growth, and maturing as a
nation. Together, the holidays reenact our peoples founding experience
and reveal through ritual and liturgy our peoples special mission. Finally,
they infuse collective meaning and joy into our individual, everyday existence throughout the year.
How each of the holidays does so is what this book will explore.
Acknowledgments
Although I have been privileged to fill a variety of leadership roles in my
career, I think of myself primarily as an educator. One of my favorite
texts, which has helped shape my educational approach generally and
specifically in this book, is Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins
and Jay McTighe.2 In the chapter entitled The Six Facets of Understanding, they write: To understand is tobind together seemingly
disparate facts into a coherent, comprehensive, and illuminating account.
We can predict heretofore unsought or unexamined results and we can
illuminate strange or unexamined experiences. In a later chapter, in a section entitled Deep Understanding: Perceiving the Essence, they write:
2. Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, Understanding by Design (Alexandria, VA: Association
for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1998), 46, 8081, 100. I am indebted
to a wonderful Jewish educator, my colleague Steven Kraus, for introducing me to
this book.
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Rendezvous with God

If we thinkin terms of explanationweask: Is the explanation powerful? In other words, does it explain many heretofore unexplained facts? Does it predict heretofore unpredicted
results? Does it enable us to see order where before there were
only random or inexplicable phenomena? Good explanations are
not just words and logic but insight into essentials. The best explanations involve inferences made from often limited evidence for
fundamental principles or patterns. A good explanationtakes
us beyond the information given3 and toward ideas that define
and structure other ideas, even a whole discipline.
Finally, quoting John Dewey,4 they write: No experience is educative
that does not tend both to knowledge of more facts, entertaining of more
ideas, and to a better, more orderly arrangement of them.
In this book, I have attempted to offer a comprehensive, coherent,
and cohesive understanding of the biblical holidays, or to borrow Albert
Einsteins term in relation to the fundamental forces of the physical universe, a unified field theory of the Torah. I am indebted to Wiggins and
McTighe for articulating in writing what I have long only been able to
intuit about my lifes work which informed my educational objectives
in writing this book.
In my personal biography, the genesis of this book began almost
two decades ago. I had just turned forty and was acting as the High Holy
Days rabbi of the Lake Shore Drive Synagogue in Chicago. A warm and
welcoming, lay-led, Modern Orthodox synagogue throughout the year,
Lake Shore Drive followed the custom of hiring a rabbi and cantor to
lead their traditional High Holy Days services. From 1991 through 2004,
acting upon the recommendation of my students and friends, Ray and
Lori Lavin, whom I first met through the Wexner Heritage Foundation,5
3. Jerome Bruner, Beyond the Information Given (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1973).
4. John Dewey, Experience and Education (New York: Macmillan/Collier, 1938).
5. The Wexner Heritage Foundation educated lay leaders in the North American Jewish
community in the history, thought, traditions, and contemporary challenges of the
Jewish people. I served in a leadership role at the Foundation for nearly two decades.
Today the Wexner Heritage program continues as one of the significant leadership
initiatives of The Wexner Foundation.
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Preface
the synagogues lay leadership invited me to be the rabbi leading their
High Holy Days services. It was in that role, writing a High Holy Days
sermon, that I first noticed the lacunae in our current understanding
of the biblical holidays and began to develop the comprehensive educational theory for teaching them which forms the core of this volume.
Later, in my teaching capacity at the Wexner Heritage Foundation, my
day job at the time, I had the opportunity to further refine and pilot
this theory among several of the Foundations leadership groups. I am
grateful to the congregants and leadership of Lake Shore Drive, and
especially to Les and Abigail Wexner, for granting me the opportunity
to serve them, to try out my initial ideas in the sanctuary and seminar
room among my congregants and students, and to develop the basic
thesis that informs this work.
This book would not have come into being without the support of
my former employer, The Tikvah Fund,6 and the generosity of its chairman, Mr. Roger Hertog, and executive director, Mr. Eric Cohen. They supported and encouraged me to spend my sabbatical year working through
the implications of my original thesis and setting it out in this volume.
Their dedication to the Jewish world and to the development of Jewish
ideas has been a source of inspiration to me and thousands of others
who have participated in their programs and benefited from their publications. I am grateful for their close association over the past seven years,
for their wide-ranging vision, and for their strong backing of this project.
My editor, Ms. Elisheva Urbas, with whom I worked closely on
my previous two books, has been my alter ego throughout the writing
process of this book as well. She helped me structure the book and align
its chapters so that I was able to say what I wished to express. I am very
grateful, as well, to my thoughtful and meticulous content editor, Shira
Koppel, who challenged my ideas throughout while greatly improving
the flow of prose in this book. I salute my publisher, Matthew Miller, his
outstanding editor-in-chief, Gila Fine, and their talented staff at Maggid
BooksTomi Mager, Nechama Unterman, and Tali Simonfor their
6. The Tikvah Fund is a philanthropic foundation and ideas institution committed to
supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and
the Jewish state.
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Rendezvous with God

professionalism in overseeing the publication of this volume; they have
been a pleasure to work with. I want to thank my friend Tova Naiman,
who graciously illustrated the Seder Clock found in the Passover chapter of this volume, as well as her professional colleagues, Zahava Bogner
and Rivka Farkas, for illustrating the Hidden Face of God found in
the chapter on Sacred Space.
As important as my professional colleagues have been, the legacy
and support of my family are the ultimate reasons that I have been
ableto author this volume. Growing up, I was fortunate to be raised by
parents survivors of the Holocaust of European Jewrywho conveyed
the richness of the Jewish holidays in our family practices. Every holiday
had its mysterious rituals and its joyous songs. I loved practicing those
rituals at home and in the little shtiebel in which we prayed; I reveled in
singing the songs of my people with my parents around the family dining room table. Those memories of my youth will stay with me forever.
As the grandson of martyrs of the Holocaust, whose books and
religious artifacts perished with them in the flames of Auschwitz, I
always regretted not having anything substantial in writing from them
that could address the questions about the meaning of God, Judaism,
and Jewish peoplehood that often vexed me and that were the center
of their respective lives. The three books that God has given me the
privilege to author,7 all based on the narrative of the Torah, are my best
attempt to address the deepest meaning of our tradition, to complete,
as it were, their unfinished lives and to leave a Jewish intellectual legacy
for my children and their descendants.
My wife and life partner of thirty years, Sharon Laufer, has also
been my biggest fan and supporter. She has given me a beautiful family and a base of emotional support that has enabled us to celebrate the
holidays together with our children in the fullest, most joyful way. My
debt of gratitude to her in creating a warm, welcoming Jewish home and
in leading our Jewish lives together knows no bounds. Veat alit al kulana.
7. The two previous books are: Leading the Passover Journey: The Seders Meaning Revealed,
The Haggadahs Story Retold and The Genesis of Leadership: What the Bible Teaches
Us about Vision, Values and Leading Change. Both books were published by Jewish
Lights, Woodstock, Vermont, 2005, 2006.
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Preface
My children, Becky, Michael, Leslie, and Matti Laufer, have
brought incredible happiness and meaning into my life. It was through
them, more than through anyone else, that I sensed Gods EverPresent
loving-kindness in the world. They taught me to see Gods presence in
the waving of the tree branches on a breezy day, in the beauty of the
falling leaves of autumn and their reflowering in spring, and in the endless love of a parent to a child and a child to its parent. It is to each of
them, their wonderful spouses, and their future descendants, that this
book is lovingly dedicated.
Rabbi Nathan Laufer
Efrat, Gush Etzion, Israel
18 Adar II, 5776
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Introduction
The Jewish Peoples

Founding Story
he story of the birth of the Jewish people as a free nation and of

the first year of their relationship with God occupies much of the biblical books of Exodus and Leviticus. That first year was the foundational
one for the Jewish people in biblical times and, as we shall see, for the
Jewish experience of time ever since.
The narrative records seven revelations of Gods presence to the
entire people within that first year, from the moment that Jewish time
began:1
1. In chapter 12 of Exodus, God told Moses to inform the Jewish people of their
pending liberation from Egyptian slavery at long last. God also informed Moses
that the Jewish calendar, Jewish time, as it were, would begin then, on the first
day of the Hebrew month of Nisan: This month shall be for you the head of the
months, the first month for you of the months of the year. As God promised,
fifteen days later the Exodus took place and the people were liberated. Less than
one year after the Exodus, God accepted the sacrificial offerings of the people in
the new Mishkan and consumed the first meal that the people offered God in
His newhome (Lev. 9).
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Rendezvous with God

1. Gods slaying of the Egyptian firstborns and the Jewish peoples
Exodus from Egypt (Ex. 12);
2. Gods splitting of the Sea of Reeds to save the people and drown
the Egyptian legions (Ex. 14, 15);
3. Gods raining down the manna, literally bread from heaven,
when the people ran out of earthly food after thirty days in the
desert (Ex. 16);
4. Gods revelation of the Ten Commandments and the covenant
at Mount Sinai (Ex. 19, 20, 24);
5. Gods forgiving the Jewish people after they worshiped the
Golden Calf and repented for their sins (Ex. 33);2
6. Gods filling the Mishkan, the biblical Sanctuary, with the Divine
Presence after the people completed its construction and furnishings (Ex. 40);
7. Gods fire consuming the peoples first sacrifices in the Mishkan,
Gods new home (Lev. 9).
These multiple revelations,3 culminating in Gods indwelling among the
2. See especially Ex. 33:710. All of the people saw the pillar of cloud, recognized it as
a divine revelation, rose in its honor, and prostrated themselves from a distance.
3. When I say multiple revelations, some people are puzzled. Most of us tend to
think that God revealed Himself only once to the Jewish nation, in the theophany
of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. There are two reasons for this. The first
is that in the Bible the theophany was the only one of Gods revelations in which
the people heard Gods voice speaking to them. Through Gods voice, the people
heard the uttering of the Ten Commandments, which, like the rest of the Torah
communicated to Moses alone, was given unique legal authority in traditional
Jewish life. However, we err in conflating or reducing Gods revelation to only Gods
voice. In the Bible, God demonstrated and communicated His intimate relationship
to the Jewish people when He appeared and redeemed them at critical junctures,
with or without words.
The second reason we tend to think that the theophany at Mount Sinai was the
only revelation is because, for people who live in the twenty-first century, when Gods
presence seems almost entirely hidden, any revelation of God in history appears to
be extraordinary. And it is. Even in the Bible, Gods presence did not manifest itself
regularlycertainly not in the presence of the entire Jewish body politic. Hence, our
tendency is to want to minimize the number of times in our collective memory that
we think God suddenly intervened in history and to limit it to Sinai. It is as if we say
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Introduction
people, were peak experiences4 that redeemed the Jewish people in
political, military, physical, and spiritual terms. Together, these experiences were nothing short of life-changing. They transformed the people
from an inchoate rabble of former slaves to a proud nation with dignity
and purpose. They also transformed the trajectory of history, from an
unredeemed state where God was nowhere to be seen, to a redeemed
state where Gods saving presence became visible and palpable.
The books of Exodus and Leviticus also include the commandments to keep the Jewish holidays and an extensive description of the
building of the Mishkan. As we will see, both the holidays and the
Mishkan are meant to retell, reenact, and embody Gods momentous
multiple revelations.5
How the Holidays Tell the Story

After the seventh and final revelation to the entire Jewish people in
the Mishkan, God revealed to Moses a whole series of laws to keep
the relationship between God and the people on track, and to further
to ourselves, One exception to the world as we know it we can live with, but more
than that begins to border on the unbelievable.
But comfortable or not, one revelation of Godat Mount Sinaiis not the story
that the Bible conveys to its readers, and not what the Jewish people in the Bible
desperately needed and personally witnessed. The Jews who left Egypt had been a
nation in captivity for hundreds of years, much of it in oppressive slave labor. During
that time, Gods presence and comforting companionship were horrifically, painfully
absent. To rectify the perception of Gods absence, God felt it necessary to reveal His
presence multiple times in the young nations life and in their evolving relationship
in order to rebuild their trust and place the relationship on a solid footing. In that
first year of the Jewish peoples freedom, God broke through the usual constraints
of our historical experience, and the people witnessed seven extraordinary events
which cumulatively added up to Gods presence returning to history and to dwelling with the Jewish people. Exactly what God had dreamed of in creating the world,
to live with the human beings that He created in His image and likeness, came
to fruition twenty-six generations later in the aftermath of the Exodus from Egypt.
4. I use this advisedly, as per Abraham Maslows coinage of the term. Abraham Maslow,
Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press,
1964).
5. See the chart at the end of this introduction: Rendezvous with God: A Unifying
Theory of the Torah.
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Rendezvous with God

develop the relationship so that the Jewish people could live with God
in the deepest sense, as a couple. These holiness lawsencapsulated
in the command You should be holy because I your God am holy
(Lev. 19:2)include, among other instructions, the laws of Judaisms
holy days, known traditionally as the Chapter of the Holidays.6
Each seasonal, biblical holiday commemorates a specific event
in the biblical narrative in which Gods presence became overtly manifest to the entire Jewish people in their first year as a free, collective
community. The association of the biblical holidays with the events
upon which they are based has always been understood in regard to the
seven-day bookend biblical holidaysthe pilgrimage festival of Passover, commemorating Gods liberation of the Jewish people from Egypt
(Ex. 12:14), and the pilgrimage festival of Sukkot, commemorating the
protective enclosures in which God caused the Jewish people to dwell
in the desert (Lev. 23:43). For both holidays, the Bible is explicit about
which events they commemorate and celebrate. I will go further and
endeavor to explain how the details of both these holidays emerge from,
and help us reexperience, the particular events they are designed to evoke.
I will demonstrate how the rituals, customs, and liturgy of the holidays
are direct, conscious expressions of the events which they commemorate.
Regarding the other biblical holidaysShavuot, which follows
the Omer offering and attendant counting of fifty days, and the autumn
holidays of Rosh HaShana, Yom Kippur, and Shemini Atzeretnone are
explicitly linked by the Bible to events in the Jewish peoples historical
narrative. Different opinions in the rabbinic tradition have linked three
of these holidays to biblical eventsShavuot to the Sinai revelation,
Rosh HaShana to the creation of the world or of humanity, and Yom
Kippur to Gods forgiveness for the Golden Calf. While largely agreeing with, and explaining more deeply, the third, I will offer a different
explanation for the first two. Finally, as the observance of the Omer
and the holiday of Shemini Atzeret are not linked to specific events
by either the Bible or mainstream rabbinic tradition, I will offer novel
explanations for both.
6. Holidays is a conflation of the words holy days. Leviticus 23 is called the Chapter
of the Holidays.
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Introduction
The order of the seven biblical holidays recorded in Leviticus 23
follows the precise order that the seven revelatory events occurred in
the biblical narrative.7 These seven events were the only ones in which
Gods presence appeared before the entire Jewish people in their first
year of freedom. Like the Passover Seder, whose purposeful order tells in
outline form the chronological story of the Book of Exodus,8 the order
of the cycle of biblical holidays over the course of the year tells the story
of the key events in the Torah in chronological order from the twelfth
chapter of the Book of Exodus through the ninth chapter of the Book of
Leviticus. The order of these holidays is not incidental, as it represents
the historical and religious process by which the Jewish people, in their
first year of collective existence, became in biblical times, and annually
strive to become, a sacred community living in relationship with God.
The Torah in Leviticus refers to the holidays as Moadei Hashem,
usually translated as Gods festivals. However, this term might better
be translated as Days of Meeting or Days of Rendezvousing with
God.9 The encounter with Gods presence, the extraordinary meeting
of God and the people, is what made the event; it is also granted to the
festival, in whole or in part, its characterization by the Torah as one of
the Mikraei Kodesh, the sacred days. In Judaism, God is the ultimate
source of all things sacred, and the holidays are no exception to this rule.10
7. In three places are the holidays recorded. In Leviticus, because of their order; in
Numbers, because of their sacrifices; and in Deuteronomy, because of the leap year
(to assure that Passover takes place in the spring month), Sifrei to Deut. 16:1, Finkelstein
edition [Hebrew], 185. Since the order, but not the content, in all three biblical books is
the same, the Sifreis emphasis on the Leviticus text following the holidays order suggests
that they follow the order of the seven revelatory events, which they commemorate.
8. See Leading the Passover Journey.
9. With one exception relating to the plague of pestilence in Exodus 9:5, the prior use
of the word moed in the Bible (seventy-three times as I count it) is in the context
of the Ohel Moed, the Tent of Meeting in the Sanctuary, where Moses and the priesthood would encounter the Divine Presence. Others have translated the tent as the
Tent of Rendezvous (see Everett Fox, in his biblical translation The Five Books of
Moses [New York: Schocken Books, 1995], 413, citing Roland Devaux Fox on Exodus
27:21). Either definition is etymologically related to Gods telling Moses that He
would meet/rendezvous with him in the Tent of Meeting (Ex. 25:22).
10. My teacher, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, in his Shiurim LeZekher Abba Mori, zl, vol.1
[Hebrew] (Mossad HaRav Kook, 2002), 170171, made a similar claim in explaining
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Rendezvous with God

In each of the holidays, then, we reenact through liturgy, readings,
and rituals the revelational event that the holiday commemorates: the
Exodus from Egypt on the first day of Passover; the splitting of the sea
on the seventh day of Passover; the falling of the manna in counting the
Omer, culminating in the holiday of Shavuot; the acceptance of Gods
kingship at Mount Sinai on Rosh HaShana; Gods forgiveness for the
sin of the Golden Calf on Yom Kippur; and Gods hovering presence
and fiery passion on Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret. Cumulatively, each
year, we relive the honeymoon year of our life as a nation in relationship with God.
Put in the terms of a typical young married couple, the seven
rendezvous in the Bible constitute something akin to the courtship,
engagement, wedding, honeymoon, forgiveness and reconciliation
following marital discord, building/furnishing a new home, and sharing
the first home-cooked meal. Those special, intimate moments of coming
together that a couple recalls and relives provide the emotional energy to
animate and invigorate the relationship throughout the marriage. Sotoo,
in the celebration of the holidays, the recollection and reliving of the
peoples moments of redemptive encounter with the Divine Presence
have provided the emotional fuel to power the Jewish peoples relationship with God for the many millennia since those events occurred. They
instill in us a recurring gratitude for all that God did for our ancestors,
and by extension for us, their spiritual descendants. In the midst of the
the reasons for the rabbinic choice of the Torah readings on the holidays:
The holidays are sacred because lofty events occurred in them that are tied up
with the revelation of God to Kenesset Yisrael [NL: the collective, eternal
Jewish people] and His choosing us with love. In light of this reason, the
sacredness of the holiday emanated from the miraculous and unique event that
occurred then. The holidays are called sacred because great and exalted things
occurred on them such as the Exodus from Egypt, the Giving of the Torah and
other similar events. The essence of the sacredness of the holidays is rooted in
Gods miracles and wonders that occurred on those days.
Rabbi Soloveitchik goes on to say: We are therefore obligated to read not
only the Torah portions that deal with the laws of the festivals and the holiday
obligations but also the biblical narratives concerning the great events that
occurred on them and which serve as the source of their sacredness and of the
very reason they are called sacred days.
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Introduction
uncertainties and vicissitudes of life and history, the holidays provide
an anchor of stability and trust in the ultimate meaning and purposefulness of our existence.
By enacting and decoding the holiday rituals and liturgies we
reawaken our original experience of rendezvousing with God in our
shared consciousness. Through the reexperiencing of these encounters
with God, year after year, we are touched, for brief intensive bursts, by
the ineffable source of the universe; we hear the address of the divine
voice at Mount Sinai, we glimpse again the mysterious veiled face of
God that was hidden beneath the coverings of the Mishkan, and we feel
Gods palpable presence dwelling among us.
The Structure of This Book

This book will examine the seven instances of divine revelation
recorded in the books of Exodus and Leviticusthat the Jewish people
experienced in their first year as a nation, and the ways those revelations
are expressed in the holidays.
Chapters 1 through 5 will explore each of the five major biblical
holidays. In each chapter, we will raise a series of questions about the
holidayquestions that have troubled me for many years and for which
I draw forth answers by returning to the narrative of the Jewish peoples
first year as a people. The most fundamental question that I will ask in
each chapter is what dramatic event of divine revelation does the holiday commemorate and how do the rituals, liturgy, or biblical readings
clue us in and give expression to that event. I will conclude each chapter
by showing how the holidays story has a carryover effect on the ethics,
rituals, and liturgy of Judaism throughout the year.
Chapter 1 (Leaving Egypt) will explore the holiday of Passover.
There are actually two sacred days during Passover on which no work is
permitted, the first and seventh days, which commemorate two separate,
but related, revelational events in the biblical narrative: the Exodus from
Egypt (Ex. 12) and the splitting of the sea (Ex. 14 and 15). The five days
in between (ol HaMoed Pesa) correspond to the journey of the Jewish people from the borders of Egypt to the Sea of Reeds.
Chapter 2 (Not by Bread Alone) will explore the meaning of
the Omer and Shavuot. Although we may not think of the Omer as
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Rendezvous with God

being integrally connected to a holiday, the Torah in Leviticus 23 apparently thinks otherwise, giving extensive treatment to the rituals of the
Omer and connecting it, using several literary devices, to the sacred day
of Shavuot.11 Contrary to our current conventional understanding of
Shavuot, I will argue that in the Bible, both the Omer and Shavuot correspond and give grateful expression to Gods revelation of the manna
in the wilderness, a story told in Exodus 16.
Chapter 3 (Remembering the Forgotten Day) will investigate
the holiday of Rosh HaShana. I will argue that this holiday gives expression, not primarily to the story of creation as is commonly thought, but
first and foremost to the Jewish peoples acceptance of the kingship,
covenant, and coronation of God at Mount Sinai, embodied in the revelation of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 19 and 20).
Chapter 4 (Return and Forgiveness) will explore the sacred day
of Yom Kippur. I will show how most of the enigmatic rites and rituals
of Yom Kippur give expression to the revelation of the Divine Presence
as the Jewish people repented and God forgave them for the sin of the
Golden Calf (Ex. 3234).
Chapter 5 (Living with God) examines Sukkot/Shemini
Atzeret. Like Passover, this festival includes two sacred daysone on
11. There are four literary devices used in the biblical text to link the two sections
together:
(i)Unlike all the other sacred days, there is no separate introduction to the sacred day
of Shavuot other than the introduction to bringing the Omer, which precedes it.
(ii)The offering of the Two Breads is introduced as being a new grain offering
(Lev. 23:16) to distinguish it from the previous grain offering of the Omer which
preceded it by only forty-nine days.
(iii)The separation between the Omer portion and the Two Breads portion of
Shavuot in the written Torah scroll is done via a parasha setuma, a closed
notation, which indicates that the two are meant to be read in conjunction with
one another. (Note also that the sections about Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur
are also separated by only a closed notation, meaning that they are meant to be
read in connection to one another. See the chapter on Rosh HaShana below.)
(iv)The root wordk-tz-r (cutting) is used precisely seven times in the two
sections, making it what Buber and Cassuto identify as a leitwort, a key word
that is meant to signal a common theme, running from the beginning of the
first section to the conclusion of the second section. This frames the Omer and
Shavuot into one large whole.
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Introduction
the first and one on the eighth day. The two sacred days correspond
and give expression to two separately narrated but related events: the
revelations of the Divine Presence at the completion of the Sanctuary
(Ex. 40) and on the day that the Sanctuary was inaugurated (Lev. 9).
The seven days prior to the Eighth Day of Assembly parallel the seven
days of preparation for the priests before they began their service in the
Sanctuary, which we, Gods kingdom of priests, reenact through the
rituals of Sukkot.
Chapter 6 (The Sacred Space-Time Continuum12) will explore
how the furnishings and architecture of the Mishkan, to which the Bible
devotes so much attention in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, embodied the same seven events of divine revelation as commemorated by the Moadim, the seven biblical sacred days. The sacred space
of the Bible thus reinforce the sacred times of the holidays in retelling
the story of the Jewish peoples first year, constituting a unified theory
of the Torah.13
Chapter 7 (The Purpose of Creating Heaven and Earth)
explains the traditional rituals and customs of Shabbat, the first biblical sacred day commanded in the chapter on the holidays in Leviticus
23. Shabbat brings together both the expression of sacred time commemorated by the biblical holidays14 and sacred space embodied by
the furnishings and the priestly service in the Mishkan.
12. Space-time is a mathematical model which combined space and time into a single,
interwoven idea called a continuum. Like the unified field theory noted in the
preface, the space-time continuum is a term made famous by Albert Einstein as
part of his theory of general relativity. The joining of space and time helped cosmologists understand how the physical universe works. I am using it here, modified by
the term sacred, to suggest that in the Bible, sacred space and sacred time were
interwoven. Together, they help us to understand and reenact our spiritual universe,
our rendezvous with God.
13. See the chart concluding this chapter, Rendezvous with God: A Unifying Theory,
p. xxxii.
14. More than that, it is the very source of the idea that time can be made sacred. The
Jewish people imitate God who made the Shabbat sacred by declaring when the new
moon would occur, thereby determining and sanctifying the days of the festivals. It
is plausible that Shabbat is the first sacred day mentioned in Leviticus 23 because the
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Rendezvous with God

Chapter 8 (The Hiddenness of God) addresses the celebration of the rabbinic festivals of anukka and Purim and the modern
commemorations of Yom HaShoa, Yom HaZikaron, Yom HaAtzmaut,
and Yom Yerushalayim. In contrast to the biblical holidays, in which
Gods presence was revealed to the entire Jewish people in the full light
of day, these later commemorative days, in which God was hidden or
even absent, represented a challenge to the rabbinic leaders of the Jewish people. The chapter will explain how the rabbinic sages and one
modern rabbi have interpreted these commemorative days in light of
the biblical holidays.
Chapter 9 (God, Torah, and the Holidays) will explain the takehome value of this understanding of the holidays as the yearly reliving
of our rendezvous with God.
How the Holidays Affect the Year

The holidays are not just celebrated annually and then forgotten for
a full year. Rather, they penetrate the way we think, behave, and pray
throughout the year.15 They celebrate formidable events which have
inspired a series of norms that guides the Jewish people, not only on
the holidays, but all year long. These norms are of two kinds: ethical
norms, in relation to other human beings created in Gods image, and
ritual/liturgical norms, in relationship to Gods Self.
The biblical tradition established that the ethical cannot be
separated from the ritual. One could not be part of a holy people if
one blatantly disregarded the moral expectations of the Jewish tradition. How one treated other people, the images of God encountered
in daily life, was as much a proof of ones piety as how one related
to God and observed the ritual commands.16 This is why the Ten
sacredness of the festivals is derivative of the sacredness of Shabbat and modeled in
great part on its observance.
15. In Nahmanides gloss on the first positive command (i.e., the duty to believe in God)
in Maimonides Book of Commandments, he concludes, The belief in the existence
of God which was made known to us through the signs, wonders, and revelations of
the Divine Presence before our very eyes, is the main point and the root from which
the commandments were born.
16. In this regard, see Leading the Passover Journey, 74.
xxviii
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Introduction
Commandments list Gods ritual commands on one tablet and Gods
ethical commands on the other in a single, continuous narrative. This
is also why chapter 19 in Leviticus (known by biblical scholars as the
Holiness Code) interweaves ritual and ethical commands in a seamless tapestry, as if to say: One cannot pull out the ethical threads from
the ritual threads without unraveling the entire fabric of what constitutes the holy in Judaism.
But the ritual is no less important. My colleague, Professor
Michael Chernick,17 in a private conversation, once framed the importance of ritual this way: Ritual is the ethics we owe God for having
created us and for having done what He did for our people. The
powerful symbolic rituals in which the Jewish people have engaged
for literally thousands of years are tokens of appreciation to God for
the gift of our peoplehood and tradition. As part of that tradition, the
rabbis also devised liturgy to be recited throughout the year, which
reminds us of the revelational events most intensely celebrated by
the holidays.
Passover is a prime example of how the ethical, the ritual, and
the liturgical penetrate Jewish life all year long. Judaisms ethical duty
every day of the year is to show empathy toward the stranger and the
impoverished. This imperative is the moral consequence of Passover, of
our powerful annual experience of our estrangement and impoverish
ment in Egypt, and Gods redemption through the miracles of the
Exodus.
Similarly, the daily ritual command to bind our arms to God
through the wearing of phylacteries and the weekly command to observe
Shabbat are expressions of our reexperiencing of Gods liberation with
a strong hand from slavery in Egypt.18 In addition, the daily Jewish
liturgy includes prayers such as the Song of the Sea and the third paragraph of the Shema, which are meant to reinforce the centrality of the
Exodus in the daily consciousness of the Jewish people.
17. Professor of Talmud, Hebrew Union College, New York, and long-time instructor
in the Wexner Heritage Foundation, which I led for many years.
18. Ex. 23:9 and 13:9. For fuller elaboration, see chapter 1, Leaving Egypt.
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Rendezvous with God

This reexperiencing of the foundational events of our people
through the biblical holidays, and their impact on how we understand ourselves and act out our values during the rest of the year, is
the greater religious purpose of their celebration, one to which we
will devote attention in our discussion of each individual holy day.
A Note on Translations
The Jewish tradition refers to the Jewish peoples rendezvous with Gods
presence as giluyei Shekhina, literally, revelations of the Divine Presence. The seven biblical revelations presuppose that God is always present in the world, but only very rarely allows that presence to become
manifest to human perception, and even more rarely to become fully
manifest before the entire nation.
Gods ever-present existence is embodied in the name by which
the Jewish people come to know God in the Bible, yud-heh-vav-heh.
Although pronounced by traditional Jews as Adonai, which translates as my Lord, it is actually a conflation of three wordshaya,
hoveh, yiheyehmeaning God was, is, and will be. Parallel to the
word HaMakommeaning literally the place, but usually translated in reference to God as the Omnipresentyud-heh-vav-heh
means that God is ever-present, that is, present in past, present, and
future (see Ex. 3:1315). What both appellations share is they are
meant to convey reassurance and comfort. God was, is, and will be
present even when, on the surface of human experience, that does
not seem to be the case.
God therefore identifies Himself as yud-heh-vav-heh in promising to fulfill His vow to the patriarchs to redeem the Jewish people after
hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt (Ex. 6:28). Gods presence and
uniqueness in the world is also one of the lessons that He is intent on
teaching Pharaoh and the Egyptians through the events of the Exodus
(E.g., Ex. 8:18, 9:14). As we will see in the course of this book, the Exodus is the foundational event upon which all of the Jewish holidays, and
indeed upon which the very covenant with the Jewish people, is based.
I will thus translate yud-heh-vav-heh as the EverPresent or, more frequently, as the EverPresent God.
xxx
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Introduction
Although God is neither male nor female, literary convention
refers to God in the male gender (He said, His will). Despite
my misgivings with this practice, and trying to be gender-neutral
whenever possible, I have nevertheless followed literary convention
in this book.
The Bible is the story of the relationship between the Ever
Present God and the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel
Benei Yisrael. In this volume, I have preferred the term Jewish people
over the literal translation Children of Israel or the Israelites, sometimes used as an alternative. This is because of my understanding that all
of the Jewish holidays are attempting to bridge the millennia between
our ancestors stories and our own. During each holiday, we put ourselves, as it were, in our ancestors shoes and reenact, reexperience, and
retell what our ancestors did three thousand years ago. To enable us to
fully identify with our biblical ancestors, I have chosen to name them
as Jews today think of themselves, as members of the Jewish people.
Finally, while I have relied primarily on the old19 and new20 translations of the Bible by the Jewish Publication Society of America, I have
resorted to other translationsincluding my ownwhen they better fit
the context of the chapter. Any errors in translation that result are, of
course, entirely my own.
19. The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1917).
20. Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures According to the Traditional Hebrew
Text (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1985).
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Rendezvous with God:

A Unifying Theory
Mikra
Sacred Story:
Revelations of God
Moed
Sacred Time:
Holidays
Mishkan
Sacred Space:
Furnishings
Exodus from Egypt

(Ex. 12)
Passoverfirst day
Copper Sacrificial
Altar, sacrifices
Splitting of the sea

(Ex. 1415)
Passoverseventh
day
Pitcher and Basin,

singing of Levites
Falling of manna
(Ex. 16)
Omer, Shavuot
Table with twelve

display breads,
jug of manna
Sinai revelation
(Ex. 1920)
Rosh HaShana
Ark, cherubs, Ten

Commandments,
Torah scroll
(Holy of Holies)
Forgiveness for
Golden Calf
(Ex. 3234)
Yom Kippur
Golden Altar of
Incense, incense
offering
Tabernacle
construction and
consecration
(Ex. 3540, Lev. 8)
Sukkot
Menora and olive oil,

eternal candle, walls
and curtains, Clouds
of Glory
Inauguration of
the Altar (Lev. 9)
Shemini Atzeret
Altars eternal flame,

priestly service
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Chapter One
Passover: Leaving Egypt
ach biblical holiday commemorates a specific event in which

the collective Jewish people encountered Gods saving presence.
The Passover Haggada,1 in recalling these moments of great awe
(Deut. 26:8), references an additional verse that explicitly describes
Gods revelation to the nation:
Great awe alludes to the revelation of the Divine Presence, as it
is written (Deut. 4:34): Has God ever attempted to take unto
Himself a nation from the midst of another nation by trials,
miraculous signs, and wonders, by war and with a mighty hand
and outstretched arm and by great awe, just as you saw the Lord
your God do for you in Egypt, before your eyes?
The events surrounding the redemption of the Exodus were witnessed
firsthand by the entire Jewish people.2 To mark Gods miraculous
1. In Maggid, the fifth item in the Passover Seder.
2. In the Haggada, Rabban Gamliel, in insisting that the eating of matza and the reason
for eating it must be included in the Passover Seder, also makes this point: Why
do we eat matza? Because the dough of our ancestors did not have time to become
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Rendezvous with God

appearance, a sacred day was established in the Jewish calendar, as it was
for each event in the first year of the Jewish peoples history in which
Gods presence was revealed. These days in which the people experienced Gods presence were appropriately designated in Leviticus 23 as
moadim or days of meeting, that is, days of meeting between God
and His people. The rituals and liturgy established for those sacred days
were designed for future generations of Jews to remember, reexperience,
dramatically reenact, and verbally retell those events that were experienced by the Jewish peoples founding generationthe generation of
the Exodus. The purpose of all of these rituals was to empower us once
again to meet God in our own lives or, as the Haggada tells us, to enable
us to see ourselves as if we personally were redeemed from Egypt.
PASSOVER IN THE BIBLE

Passover is the first seasonal holiday listed in Leviticus 23, the chapter
devoted to the biblical holidays:
These are Gods festivals, sacred holidays, that you shall celebrate
at their appropriate times. In the afternoon of the fourteenth day
of the first month, you shall offer a Passover sacrifice to God. And
on the fifteenth day of this month it is a festival of matzot to God,
for seven days you shall eat matzot. The first day is a sacred holiday
to youand the seventh day is a sacred holiday. (Lev. 23:48)
Passover is mentioned first because, from the Bibles perspective, the
Jewish calendar does not begin when we might imaginein the autumn
month of Tishrei, when Rosh HaShana occurs. In fact, it begins in the
springtime month of Nisan, when Passover falls: This month [i.e.,
Nisanthe month of Passover] shall be the starting month for you,
the first month for you in the months of the year (Ex. 12:2). In Nisan,
the Jews left Egypt, were freed from the burden of slavery as well as
from the pagan calendar, and became masters of their own time and
fermented before the King of kings, The Holy One, Blessed Be He, revealed Himself
to them and redeemed them.
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Passover
fate. Therefore, the first seasonal holiday of the Jewish people, marking
the Jewish peoples birth as a nation, is Passover not Rosh HaShana.
The Exodus from Egypt was such a formative and foundational
experience of meeting God that all of the biblical holidays, even those
that seem on the surface to have little to do with the Exodus (such as
Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur), are actually in commemoration of
the Exodus from Egypt. They commemorate events that came after
the Exodus and were predicated upon it. The narrative of the Exodus in the Passover Haggada not only tells the story of leaving Egypt,
but retells, in abbreviated fashion, almost all of the major revelatory
events that occurred in the Book of Exodus. The Exodus from Egypt
is thus the orienting event for the biblical events that follow, as well
as for all the holidays in the Bible.
Understanding Passovers central role in commemorating this first
great moment of divine revelation will help us see how all the Passover
traditions work together to shape our experience of the holidayand
also echo in the ethics and rituals observed yearlong, far beyond the
week of Passover.
OBSERVING PASSOVER, RETELLING THE STORY

Why do we celebrate Passover the way that we do? How does the observance of the holiday help us reexperience that meeting with the Divine?
On Passover, asking fundamental questions is a core part of the holiday experience. The most outstanding example is the recitation of Ma
Nishtana, the Four Questions, prior to the Maggid portion of the Seder.
So essential are questions to the Passover experience that these Four
Questions are asked aloud even by a person who conducts the Seder
alone, with no interlocutors to address them to (Pesaim 116a). Many
Passover questions are generated by the celebration itself, which begs
us to examine the specific aspects of the holiday whose logic, on the
surface, is unclear. For instance:
Why are the three primary commandments associated with
Passoverthe removal of all ametz, the eating of matza, and
the retelling of the story of the Exodus on the evening of
Passoverso important to the Passover experience?
3
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Rendezvous with God

Why, when we retell the story, do we use as our sacred text the
Passover Haggada, a secondary source composed by the rabbinic sages of the early Common Erarather than the biblical Book of Exodus? Would it not have made more sense at the
Seder to read from our primary source, the Bible itself?
What is the significance of each item in the sequence of fifteen
dramatic and unique Passover rituals that define the Seder? Is
the total number of rituals, in some way, meaningful?
Let us begin with our preparations for the holiday to understand why
ametz and matza are so pivotal to reexperiencing the Exodus.
AMETZ AND MATZA ON PASSOVER

As Jewish homemakers know, there is a biblical command to get rid of
all of ones leavened products (ametz) prior to the onset of Passover.
Indeed, the elimination of ametz in traditional households is perhaps
the main and most onerous task in preparation for the holiday. The
Bible instructs the Jewish people to eat flat, unleavened bread (matza)
on Passover, instead of leavened bread, the staple that nourishes much
of humanity until today.3 The Passover Haggada offers two, seemingly
contradictory, reasons for why we eat matza on Passover. The first reason, found immediately following Yaatz, is that matza is the bread of
impoverishment (lama anya from the word ani, a poor person) that
our ancestors ate in Egypt. Later on, toward the end of Maggid, Rabban Gamliel, basing himself on a verse in the Book of Exodus, offers a
different reason for eating matza:
Because the King of kings, The Holy One, Blessed Be He, revealed
Himself and redeemed the Jewish people as it is written, And
they baked unleavened flatbread from the dough which they had
brought out of Egypt, because it had no time to rise, since they
were driven out of Egypt and could not delay; and they made no
other provisions of food to carry with them (Ex. 12:39).
3. For a more thorough investigation of why we eliminate ametz prior to Passover and
instead eat matza, see Leading the Passover Journey, 16, 4041.
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Passover
The disparity between the first reason, in which matza (what the
Bible itself later calls leem oni) is associated with the impoverish
ment of the Jewish people in Egypt (Deut. 16:3), and the second
reason, which understands matza as the bread of freedom (what the
rabbinic tradition later calls leem deeruta), has to do with the
moment in the Seder when each reason is provided. The impoverish
ment reason is offered immediately following Yaatz when, in
the story traced by the Seder, the Jewish people are still enslaved
in Egypt, after Pharaohs decree of infanticide. The freedom reason
is offered toward the end of Maggid, when, in the Haggadas verbal
retelling of the story, the Jews are on their way out of Egypt. The
same physical substance, matza, takes on two completely different
meanings depending on when and how one relates to it in the course
of telling the storywithin the chains of bondage, or the exhilaration of freedom.
If matza, in the earlier iteration, while the Jews were still in
Egypt, was poor mans bread, then what was rich mans bread?
None other than ametz. ametz was rich mans bread in two ways.
First, the ingredients, which included fermenting yeast, enriched it
(unlike matza, which was made only of flour and water). Second, the
time that it took for the dough to rise was a luxury that only the Jewish peoples wealthy Egyptian masters could afford.4 The Jews, under
the constant prodding of their taskmasters, were left with no time to
breathe (Ex. 6:9), and could not afford the cost or the time of the yeast.
The Jewish slaves had to make do with the tasteless, flat, pseudo-bread
called matza.
It is precisely because ametz was associated with the Egyptians,
who attained their wealth and their luxurious lifestyle by expropriating
our ancestors slave labor, that the Bible prohibits not only eating ametz
but also deriving any benefit from it duringor even following the
holiday. ametz on Passover is taboo for the Jewish people because
4. It is common knowledge that fermented bread was invented in ancient Egypt and
was itself a form of currency. See, for instance, Jimmy Dunn in Prices, Wages
and Payments in Ancient Egypt: http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/
prices.htm.
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Rendezvous with God

the richness with which it is associated is what is called in tort law the
product of unclean hands. In this case, it was the result of the ancient
Egyptians abuse of our ancestors slave labor. This is why the tradition
has us search for ametz before Passover and dispose of itin fact, burn
iton the morning prior to the beginning of the holiday.5 With the
ametz destroyed, and matza spread out on the festival table, the Jewish
people are then bidden to retell the Passover story at the evening Seder.
THE PASSOVER SEDER

The Passover Seder reenacts the Jewish journey in the Book of Exodus,
from its opening verses in chapter 1 until its closing verses in chapter
40. Rather than the Bible, which was authored centuries before the
Common Era, the liturgical text that guides us through the Seder is the
Passover Haggada, authored by the rabbis of the Common Era, since it
is considerably shorter and more compact, packing greater punch with
fewer words. Moses himself modeled the creative and more succinct
retelling of the Passover story in the Book of Deuteronomy. There,
speaking to the next generation of Jews, who had not themselves
experienced the Exodus, he offers several powerful restatements of
the Passover tale, which we incorporate into the Maggid section of
the Haggada.6
Notwithstanding the creative retelling by the rabbis of the
content of the Passover story, the rabbinic sages followed the Bible
in using the three primary human senses to shape the form of their
retellingthe visual, the verbal/audial, and the kinesthetic/active
senses. For the generation that left Egypt, the visual telling of the Jewish story took the form of the Mishkan, that was placed in the center of
the Jewish encampment in the desert and reminded the people of their
5. The only other commandment aside from ametz on Passover that has a similar
set of laws governing it is idolatry. ametz on Passover is like idolatry all year
long.
6. Including the Haggadas opening line in response to the Four Questions, We were
slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt (Deut. 6:20), and the centerpiece of Maggid, the exegesis
of the pilgrims restating of the Passover journey (Deut. 26:58).
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formative experiences;7 the verbal/audial telling took place through
the narrative in Exodus and Leviticus; and the active/dramatic telling occurred through the biblical holidays commanded to the Jewish
people in chapter 23 of Leviticus. The Haggada too retells the biblical story using all three of the primary human senses, with the Seder
plate constituting the visual, Maggid, the verbal/audial, and the fifteen
dramatic action items at the Seder, the kinesthetic.
The Bible, then, and the Haggada in the times of the rabbinic
sages, used all three mediums to tell and retell the story because different people rely on and are motivated by different modes of perception.
For some, seeing is believing. For others, what one hears and repeats
is what one remembers. For yet others, only by doing and acting out
something is the underlying idea internalized. Both the Bible and the
rabbis used all three mediums to assure that the message of the biblical
story was effectively communicated.
THE SEDER PLATEVISUAL RETELLING

As soon as one approaches the table on Passover, before one has even
sat down, one is struck by the visual pageantry on the table, a pageantry that is meant to visually retell the Passover story. In the center
of the table, aside from the three matzot that are usually covered, lies
the Seder plate. The Seder plate is so called not merely because it is
used to conduct the Passover Seder, but because, like the Seder itself,
it too has an order, or seder. The order to the plates arrangement is
crucial because it faithfully recreates, in visual form, the story that the
plate retells.
There are myriad customs as to the arrangement of the Seder
plate.8 None of these is arbitrary. Rather, each custom represents a different visual interpretation of the crucial elements of the Seder and
their role in telling the story of the Exodus. Since I understand the entire
Seder to be a chronological representation of the Jewish peoples journey
7. See the chapter on The Sacred Space-Time Continuum later in this volume.
8. See Gavriel Zinner, Nitei GavrielHilkhot Pesach, elek Beit (New York: Moriah Press,
1989), 322323, 658667, which presents eighteen different Seder plate arrangements.
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in the Book of Exodus, the arrangement of the Seder plate that I have
developed mirrors this chronological progression.
The Seder plate is arranged in a circle, using the organizing principle of an analog clock telling time (see image on following page).
At one oclock is the karpas, a vegetable, preferably green, like
parsley, which symbolizes the prolific growth of the Jewish people
in their early years in Egypt (corresponding to Ex. 1:7). At three
oclock is the aroset, which simulates mortar and symbolizes Pharaohs stratagem to put the Jewish people through difficult physical work in order to stem their rate of growth (Ex. 1:11). At the five
oclock station is the maror, symbolizing the next step in Pharaohs
nefarious schemeembittering and oppressing the Jewish people, not
merely through hard work, but through harsh, oppressive bondage
(Ex. 1:13, 14). At the seven oclock station is the azereta solid chunk
of ungrated horseradish. Unlike the grated horseradish, this knobby, dis
figured chunk is impossible to swallow. The azeret embodies Pharaohs
ugly decree of infanticide to cast every newborn Jewish male into the Nile
River, a royal order which the Jewish people could not withstand (Ex. 1:22).9
At the nine oclock station is the zeroathe roasted shank bone
that symbolizes the Paschal sacrifice that the Jewish people courageously ate on the night of the Exodus (Ex. 12:311). The word zeroa
also presages the zeroa netuyaGods outstretched arm that split
the sea seven days after the Exodus.10 At the eleven oclock station is
the beitzaa roasted egg, symbolizing the festival sacrifice that was
brought in the Temple on Passover, and evoking the construction of
the Mishkan, the precursor to the Temple, which concludes the Book
of Exodus (Ex. 40:3438). In the center of the plate, our family has the
custom of placing a small bowl of salt water in which to dip the karpas,
the vegetable eaten as the third item in the Seder, and then later to dip
a hard-boiled egg before the multi-course meal known as Shulan
Orekh (the eleventh item in the Seder).
9. Unlike Pharaohs previous attempts to suppress their rate of growth, which the people
somehow managed to overcome, the biblical text does not tell us that they continued
to proliferate after the infanticide decreecf. Ex. 1:22 to Ex. 1:12, 17, and 20.
10. See Ex. 14:16, 21, 26, 27.
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BEITZA ROASTED EGG

Holiday offering in Tabernacle/
Temple: spiritual redemption
KARPAS VEGETABLE
Fertility/growth of
Jewish people in Egypt
SALT WATER
Minute-hand pointing to 2 oclock:
sweat of Jewish peoples labor;
Hour-hand pointing to 10 oclock:
physical rescue via waters
of the split sea
ZEROA ROASTED BONE
Paschal offering on night of
Exodus: political freedom
AROSET MORTAR
Harsh labor and
unrelenting toil
AZERET SOLID CHUNK

MAROR ROMA INE
OF HORSERA DISH
LETTUCE/GRO UND
Unassimilable evil (drowning
HORSERA DISH
of males in the river)
Bitter enslavement and oppression
The Seder Plate Clock
Like the matza, which symbolizes the bread of suffering and impoverishment in the early part of the Seder (This is the bread of affliction that
our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt) and later symbolizes the bread
of redemption when the Jewish people leave Egypt, the salt water too
has a double meaning. At the beginning of the Passover sagasignified
by two oclockit symbolizes the sweat of Jewish slaves toiling under
the hot Egyptian sun; toward the latter part of the Passover saga
signified by ten oclockit symbolizes the liberating waters of the
splitting sea, where the Jewish people were saved. The hands of the
clock signal the two opposite sides of the story; the right hand points
toward the side of developing suffering, while the left hand points toward
developing redemption. What separates the two is the passage of time
on the proverbial clock.
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Altogether, there are seven items on the Seder plate, symbolizing
the seven days of Passover which the Seder meal inaugurates.11
Thus, the Seder plate that we see in front of us as we take our
seats at the table already narrates the story of the Book of Exodus in
chronological order, just as the Maggid section of the Haggada and the
entire Seder will each tell the story of the Passover journey in its own
unique, but overlapping way.
THE SEDERS KINESTHETIC RETELLING

In total, there are fifteen activities in the Passover Seder whose names
are chanted or sung, in an almost universal custom, as a type of Table
of Contents to the proceedings of the evening. A newcomer at a Passover Seder would justifiably wonder why the participants are singing the
Table of Contents, instead of delving straight into the evenings program
itself. In fact, the fifteen Seder activities and our preliminary chanting of
their names are related to several other fifteens connected to Passover:
The holiday of Passover falls on the fifteenth day of the Jewish

month of Nisan.
The song Dayenu, found toward the end of the Maggid section
of the Seder, also mentions fifteen events for which the participants praise God.
In the Torah scroll, the central column of the Song of the Sea
(sung by the Jewish people after the splitting of the Sea of
Reeds) contains fifteen lines that form a sort of ascending ladder
(Ex. 15:119).
All these fifteens,12 and the interlacing of songs with most of them, are
related to yet another fifteen, the name of God associated with the
11. As we will see later in the book, the number seven is the symbol of the covenantal
bond between God and the Jewish people and the organizing numeral of all the
biblical holidays.
12. And several more fifteens as well, not directly related to Passover, but linked to
encountering Gods presence:
fifteen Psalms (120134) that begin with the words, A Song of Ascents that were
sung by the Levites on the steps leading up to the Temple in Jerusalem;
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xodus and found in the Song of the Sea. The name Yah, the most
E
primal of Gods names, comprises the two Hebrew letters yud and heh,
which in gematriaHebrew numerology in which each letter has a
numerical equivalentequal fifteen.
All of the fifteens connected to Passover lead to the experience of,
or an encounter with, the Divine Presence. It is not at all surprising that
these fifteens are associated with song, because the propensity of the
soul when having an experience with the Divine is to break out in song.
But beyond giving song-filled expression to being touched
by God, the chanting of the Seders program also helps to remind
the Seder participants of the order of the activities in their proper
chronological sequence. After all, the entire purpose of the Seder in
the Haggada is to take the Seder participants on a fifteen-step voyage that recreates Gods saving presence in the Book of Exodus and
makes it their own.
Maggid, the fifth in the sequence of Seder activities, does a master
ful job of verbally encapsulating the whole of the Exodus narrative, from
the enslavement of the Jewish people until their redemption. Why then,
we might ask, do we need the other fourteen activities in the Seder?
Because just as the Seder plate is organized to retell the story of the Jewish peoples founding event visually, and the Maggid will retell the story
verbally, so too the other fourteen steps of the Seder are equally important and powerful instruments to retell the Exodus story kinesthetically,
through symbolic actions.
Each of the fifteen activities in the Seder has a unique and dramatic role in retelling the story of the Exodus journey:
1. Kadesh
Recitation of the holiday Kiddush over the first of the four cups of wine
The blessing over wine marks the day as sacred. Unlike the other Jewish
holidays, in which a blessing is recited over only one cup of wine, on
fi fteen words chanted in the priestly blessing;
fifteen words of praise in the Yishtaba prayer that is recited daily and concludes
the Verses of Praise section of the morning prayers.
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Passover night we recite blessings over four cups of wine. Why four?
The rabbis linked the four cups to the four terms of redemption, which
God instructs Moses to convey to the Jewish people:
Therefore say to the Jewish people: I am the EverPresent
God. I will bring you out from under the burdens of the
Egyptians, and I will save you from their servitude, and I
will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great
judgments, and I will take you to be My people and I will
be your God, and you shall know that I am the EverPresent,
your God, who brought you out from under the burdens of
the Egyptians (Ex. 6:67).
Despite the numerical parallelism between the four cups and the four
promises of redemption, the rabbinic insight begs the question of what
these cups of wine have to do with the process of redemption. The
answer lies in the fact that the four cups of wine serve to subdivide the
Haggada text and the Passover story of redemption into four parts. Each
cup of wine takes the participants to a different moment in the journey
of redemption, to a different rendezvous of God with the people. The
four cups serve as stage directions in performing the Passover saga on
the night of the Exodus. Each of these four cups of wine, by intermittently loosening up our state of consciousness, enables us to enter the
time machine at each point and imagine the four different moments
in the Passover journey.13 Thus, the Seder participants can imagine and
reexperience the different points of redemption that the Jewish people
experienced in the story of the Exodus; they are transported in their
minds to the key moments in the biblical narrative in which Gods saving presence made itself manifest to the Jewish people. As God rendezvoused with our ancestors, we rendezvous with God.
13. Within the recitation of the Kiddush, the word for time, zeman, is found three times:
the time of our freedom. He who sanctifies the Jewish people and the times [of
meeting]who has brought us to this time. In my interpretation, the latter words
transport us to the time that the Jewish people entered Egypt, the place where we
ultimately encountered Gods saving presence.
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The first cup, corresponding to the first term of redemption in
Exodus 6, I will bring you out from under the burdens of Egypt, takes
the participants of the Seder from the beginning of the Passover story
when Jacob and his descendants arrive in Egypt (verse 1 of Exodus),
through their period of enslavement, and through the first nine of the
ten plagues that God brings upon the Egyptians (Ex. 111). The plagues,
which the Egyptians experienced and the Jewish people witnessed, lightened the burdens of the Jewish slaves as they progressively freed them
from their oppressive conditions. For example, their work in the fields
(Ex. 1:1314)14 could no longer be foisted upon them by their Egyptian
overseers because the fields were destroyed, first by the plague of hail
and then by the plague of locusts, which consumed whatever vegetation
had remained standing (see Ex. 10:15).
The second cup of wine, corresponding to the second verse of
redemption, I will save you from your servitude, brings the participants
to the night of the Exodus, when God brought the tenth plague and freed
the Jewish people from ever serving the Egyptians again.
The third cup, corresponding to the verse, I will redeem you with
an outstretched arm and with great judgments, carries the participants
to the point in time, seven days after the exit of the Jewish people from
Egypt, when they stood at the shores of the Sea of Reeds. There the
people witnessed the legions of their enemy, who were on a mission of
vengeance to massacre or reenslave them, drown before their very eyes,
while they emerged unscathed on the other side. Moses, Gods servant,
acting as Gods outstretched arm, was instructed to stretch out his arm
over the sea. With his staffGods scepterin hand, he was first to split
the sea and lead the Jewish people through the dry seabed; he was then
to recongeal it to drown the Egyptian army in punishment, bringing
great judgments on the Egyptians for their many sins, including the
drowning of the newborn Jewish males.15
14. Thousands of years before the enslavement of African-Americans in North America,
the Jewish people were the slave laborers who worked the fields under the searing
Egyptian sun.
15. This is apparently how Yitro understood the drowning of the Egyptians in Ex. 18:11:
Because the very thing that they intended to do came upon them.
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Finally, the fourth cup of wine, corresponding to the fourth
expression of redemption, I will take you to be My people and I will be
your God, brings the Seder participants, six weeks or so after the splitting of the sea, to the foot of Mount Sinai, where God took the Jewish
people in a covenantal act to be His people and where Gods presence
came to rest in the Mishkan that the people built.
2. URatz
The ritual laving of hands without reciting the usual blessing
Just as the wine of Kadesh prepares the Seder participants minds to
reexperience the events of the Exodus and Gods saving presence
manifested there, the ritual washing of the hands symbolically prepares
their bodies to do the same.16 In the Bible, whenever there was an
expectation of encountering the Divine Presence, the people had to wash
their bodies in anticipation. Therefore, in Exodus 19, Moses instructed
the people to immerse themselves in a pool of water to prepare for the
revelation of Gods presence at Mount Sinai.17 Similarly, the priests,
before they could enter the holy section of the Sanctuary close to where
Gods presence dwelled, had to wash their hands and feet (Ex. 30:1721).
So too, do the participants of the Seder, who have now through the
Kadesh journeyed in their minds imagination back to Egypt, wash their
hands without a blessing in anticipation of the revelations of the Divine
Presence to the Jewish people that will occur in the course of the Seder.
We do not recite a blessing, which would require kavanathe
minds focused concentrationbecause in URatz it is our bodies, not
our minds, that we are preparing for redemption. By designating a separate item in the Seder to symbolize the preparation of our bodies, we
convey the fact that the Exodus was first and foremost a liberation of
16. Of the fifteen steps in the Seder, only URatz begins with the Hebrew letter vav,
meaning and. This indicates that Kadesh and URatz are linked to one another,
both serving to prepare the Seder participantsmind and bodyfor undertaking
the Passover journey through the Book of Exodus.
17. This is what is meant by the people sanctifying themselves and washing their clothes
in Ex. 19:10, 14.
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Passover
the Jewish body-politic from the physical/political bondage of Egypt.
Our spiritual liberation came later in the story. Regardless, together
Kadesh and URatz serve as the introduction to the story, which begins
with Karpas.
3. Karpas
The eating of a vegetable dipped in salt water or aroset and reciting
the appropriate blessing for creating the fruit of the earth
When the Jewish people first came down to Egypt they experienced
it as if it were the long-lost Garden of Eden. Back in the Garden, God
had blessed human beings with the words, Be fruitful, multiply, and
fill the earth (Gen. 1:28). In Egypt, as related in the Bible, the Jews
were fruitful, and swarmed, and multiplied and became very, very
strong and the land was filled with them (Ex. 1:7) in fulfillment of
Gods primordial blessings. Their very prodigious growth alarmed
Pharaoh and gave him the pretext to launch a policy of oppression
against them lest they continue to grow and join his enemies in overthrowing the regime (Ex. 1:10). The oppression took the form of slave
labor in construction and fieldwork under the burning Egyptian sun
(Ex. 1:1314).
To symbolize the fertility and growth of the Jewish people in
Egypt, we take a vegetable that grows in the earth, preferably green in
color to symbolize its vitality. Ashkenazi Jews then dip it into salt water,
representing the sweat-drenched bodies of our ancestors. Sephardi Jews
dip the vegetable in aroset, symbolizing the construction mortar in
which the bodies of the Jewish people were caked while building Pharaohs garrison cities (Ex. 1:11).
We know from the Haggada that karpas is intended to represent
the Jewish peoples growth and fertility. The author/editor chooses to
explain the word varav, and [they became] many, in Maggid with
a verse from Ezekiel: Many, like the plants in the field, I have made
you (Ezek. 16:7). Therefore, we take a vegetable from the field, which
symbolizes fertility and growth, and dip it in salt water or aroset,
which symbolizes the slavery which the very growth of the Jewish
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nation precipitated.18 In this same vein, some medieval rabbinic sages
deconstructed the word karpas into two constituent wordssamekh
perakhmeaning sixty (the numerical value given to the Hebrew
letter samekh) and oppressive. According to the Midrash, the samekh
symbolizes the robust growth of the Jewish people from seventy to
600,000 males in only a few hundred years, by virtue of miraculous
births of sextuplets. Oppressive because, as the Bible tells us in two
consecutive verses (Ex. 1:1314), the slave labor was oppressive. Thus,
Karpas mirrors the first fourteen verses of the Book of Exodus and sets
the context for the story that follows.
4. Yaatz
Breaking the middle of the three matzot, wrapping and
hiding the larger broken segment for the afikoman
In the biblical story, Pharaohs tactic of slave labor fails to stem the prodigious growth of the Jewish people. Increasingly frustrated and desperate, Pharaoh tries to persuade the Jewish midwives to strangle the boys
when they are born; to his great consternation, the midwives do not
cooperate and the people continue their unabated growth. Ultimately, he
commands all of his people simply to throw all of the male Jewish babies
into the Nile. Unlike his previous efforts, this brutal decree appears to
break the spirit and stem the growth of the people.19
In one, apparently exceptional, instance, a Levite man marries the
daughter of Levi and they have an infant son. The birth mother hides
the baby for three months and then, nestling him in a straw basket that
she weaves and waterproofs especially for the purpose, places her child
adrift on the Nile, while the infants older sister looks after him. The
daughter of Pharaoh discovers him crying and is persuaded by his sister
to hire the infants biological mother as wet-nurse, thus returning the
infant to his parents for the early years of his upbringing. After being
18. If it seems repulsive to consume something symbolically drenched in sweat or caked
in mud, that is as it should be, for the enslavement of people against their will is
indeed repulsive.
19. See footnote 9, p. 8 above.
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weaned, he is brought to Pharaohs daughter who adopts him and names
him Moses (Ex. 2:110).
At the Passover Seder, we reenact the story of Moses birth and
rescue with Yaatz. First, we break the middle matza. Why do we do
this? In biblical times, the Jewish people comprised three castes: Israelites, Levites, and priests. The three matzot, each representing one of
the castes, collectively represent the Jewish people. The breaking of
the middle matza in half, first and fundamentally represents the breaking of the collective spirit of the Jewish people by Pharaohs decree of
infanticide. The middle matza, representing the tribe of Levi, is broken
because the Bible goes out of its way to inform us that both parents of
Moses came from that tribe.
We take the larger broken fragment of matza, representing Moses,
the son of his Levite parents and the most important actor in the biblical drama. Then we wrap it and hide it as Moses was enwrapped as an
infant and hidden. The smaller segment of matza, representing Miriam
and Aaron, Moses siblings, from whom he was separated, is returned
in between the two remaining complete matzotas they remained in
Egypt among their enslaved brethren. Just as Moses sister looked on
with concern to see what would happen to him floating on the Nile, the
children sitting at the Seder carefully observe where the matza is hidden
so that they can steal it back. They then negotiate for its return to the
parent who hid it in the first place, just as Miriam did for her mother.
How do we know that this is the correct interpretation of Yaatz?
Because the point later on in the Seder, when the hidden matza is taken
out and eaten, is called Tzafunliterally, the hidden one. The root
word tz-f-n, denoting hiding, is precisely the word used (twice) when
Moses mother hid him as an infant, an unusual usage to denote hiding that is found nowhere else explicitly in the five books of the Torah
(Ex. 2:23).
Moses birth and subsequent maturing into a caring and courageous young man (Ex. 2:1122) set the stage for the next point in the
biblical drama and the Passover Seder: Gods remembering His promise
to Abraham to rescue his descendants from captivity and to punish their
oppressorsboth of which will take place in the course of the Seders
fifth activity, Maggid.
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5. Maggid
The Haggadas retelling of the Exodus
The word Maggid, literally telling, corresponds to the word Haggada,
the book in which the Seder is embedded. This fifth step in the Seder
plays a central role in verbally retelling the story of the Exodus and
fulfilling the command of, And you should tell your child on that day
(Ex. 13:8).
The section of Maggid seems, at first glance, anything but ordered
and structured. The text moves around from the biblical tale of the Exodus to rabbinic stories and interpretations of those biblical stories in what
appears to be a helter-skelter, hodge-podge manner. Upon more careful
inspection though, it turns out that Maggid is highly structured and, in
its retelling, advances the biblical story just as we might expect it to. The
constituent parts of Maggid follow the precise order of the biblical verse
from which we learn the duty to tell the story of the Exodus in the first
place: And you should tell your child on that day saying: Because of
this [or: this is because of what], the EverPresent God did for me when
I left Egypt (Ex. 13:8).20
The Maggid section is arranged in six subsections following the
precise order of this verse. The six constituent parts are: Telling, to your
child, on that day, saying Because of this, did for me, when I left Egypt.
The telling section begins with the paragraph, We were slaves
in Egypt, continues with the tale of the five sages in Benei Berak, and
concludes with the final words of R. Elazar b. Azarias paragraph (all the
days of your life to include the Messianic era). This section informs us
20. I first came across the deciphering of the general order of Maggid in a brilliant introductory essay by Rav Naftali Maskil LeAison (182997) to the English translation
of the Malbim Haggada (New York: Targum Press, Feldheim Publishers, 1993),
VXXVI. Although my analysis, like his, follows the order of Exodus 13:8, it parses
the verse differently in two instances: separating the words and you should tell from
to your child, since the Haggada treats each as a distinct topic, and combining
the words saying with because of this since that entire subsection of Maggid
deals with the causes of the enslavement and redemption. For an insightful, more
recent treatment of this verse to explain Maggid, see Menachem Leibtag, Understanding Maggid (Yeshivat Gush Etzion, Tanakh Study Center Archives, http://
www.tanach.org/special/magidq.txt).
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what we are supposed to tell, why we tell it, who does the telling, and
what is the optimal length for telling the Exodus story.
The section to your child follows, telling us that all members
of the Jewish people and of future generations are to be engaged with
the story of the Exodus, from the wise, to the wicked, to the simple, and
even to the one who has not yet learned enough to question. This section begins with the words, Blessed is the Omnipresent, blessed is He,
and continues with the four children, concluding with the paragraph of
the child who does not know how to ask.
The section corresponding to the words on that day informs us
precisely what day and what time of the day we are to tell the Exodus
story, and is encapsulated in the paragraph which begins: Perhaps from
the first day of the month.21
The section explaining the words saying, Because of this represents the longest subsection, by far, of Maggid as it has to explain
how and why the Jewish people were both enslaved and redeemed
(Because of this). This section begins with the paragraph, In the
beginning our ancestors were idol worshipers, and extends for several
pages, all the way through Rabban Gamliels prescription of why we
eat maror at the Seder.
The words did for me in the biblical verse are given expression
in the paragraph, In every generation a person should see him/herself
as if he/she were taken out of Egypt.
Finally, the section of when I left Egypt is encapsulated in
the first two paragraphs of the traditional Hallel, beginning with
Halleluya, Praised be God, and concluding with the paragraph, When
Israel left Egypt.
The Maggid section, then, which seemed to be disorganized
on the surface, turns out to be highly organized. The underlying
order is a brilliant metaphor for the Jewish peoples experience in
21. Notice how the verse, You should tell your child on that day (Ex. 13:8) is used
by the Haggada as a proof text in this paragraph in response to the wicked child as
well as to the child who does not know how to ask. Toward the end of Maggid the
Haggada will again use this verse as the proof text for the paragraph beginning, In
every generation. The editor of Maggid clearly had this verse in mind in structuring
the retelling of the Exodus narrative.
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Egypt and throughout history: While historical events often seem
haphazard and incomprehensible, they are actually purposeful and
meaningful. Behind the curtain of Jewish history stands structured
divine intention recognized only from a distance and with the benefit of hindsight.22
In addition, there are two dramatic moments in Maggid that correspond to the key moments which unfold in the biblical tale: first, when
we raise our cups in a toast, praising God for His promise of redemption to our ancestor Abraham at the Covenant between the Pieces,23
and second, when we dip our fingers into our wine for each of the ten
plagues. These two actions correspond to the two pivotal moments in
the Exodus story. The first is Gods memory of His covenantal promise
and decision to actafter Moses growth and exile from Egyptat the
end of chapter 2 in the Book of Exodus.24 The second is the execution of
the plagues, the tenth of which ultimately persuades Pharaoh to release
the Jewish people from Egypt (Ex. 712).
The Seder participants recite Maggid, the redemption narrative, which leads up to the reenactment of the final meal in Egypt. At
that point in the Seder, the participants drink the second cup of wine
commemorating Gods second promise to the Jewish people to save
them from the servitude of Egypt. Indeed, as the people in Egypt sat
down to eat what was, perhaps, one of the most filling meals of their
entire sojourn in Egypt, their servitude to the Egyptians came to a
long-awaited end.
22. And when My Presence passes, I will place you in the cleft of the rock, and will
cover you until I pass. You will see Me from behind, but you will not see My face
(Ex. 33:2223).
23. Gen. 15:1314: You should know that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign
land where they will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. However, the
nation that enslaves them I will judge and afterward they [Abrahams descendants]
will leave with great wealth.
24. Ex. 2:2425: God heard the cries of the Children of Israel and God remembered
his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and God saw the Children of Israel
and God knew.
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6. Ratza
The ritual laving of hands before eating bread, followed
by the recitation of the appropriate blessing
In the biblical story, the Jews were commanded to plan for their departure from Egypt by setting aside a lamb and preparing one last, barbecue
dinner on their final night in Egypt (Ex. 12:311). During the Passover
Seder, the participants now reenact this last meal. But first, in preparation for the meal, they wash their hands, this time with a blessing, in
order to eat the matzot that God commanded the Jews to eat on that
final night in Egypt.
7/8. Motzi Matza
Eating a portion of matza, reciting beforehand the usual
blessing over bread and the special blessing over matza
The Bible records that the Jewish people were commanded to eat, as their
final meal in Egypt, the Paschal sacrifice with matzot and bitter herbs
(Ex. 12:8). Since matzot are mentioned first, the participants begin by
reciting two blessings over them. The first is for breadbecause while
matza does not look like a loaf of bread, it was the only bread that our
ancestors could afford in Egypt and had time to prepare as they left
Egypt25and the second blessing is over the eating of matza, which was
specifically commanded by God to be eaten that evening. Having recited
both blessings, they eat a substantial portion of this unleavened bread.
9/10. Maror/Korekh
Eating a portion of bitter herbs (romaine lettuce and/or ground
horseradish) dipped in aroset, after reciting the special blessing
Following the eating of the matzot, the participants eat the bitter herbs
mentioned in the biblical command. Since the command was in the
plural (bitter herbs), they are consumed in two forms: first, dipped in
arosetas the bitterness of Egypt was associated with the servitude
25. See the section on ametz and matza, above.
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Rendezvous with God

signified by the aroset/mortar26and then in sandwich form with
matza (the Hillel Sandwich), since the verse implies the herbs were
to be eaten with the matzot.27
11. Shulan Orekh
Partaking of a festive meal, including at least two cooked dishes
In the biblical story, the Jewish people were instructed to eat the roasted
lamb that they had designated as the Passover sacrifice. This was the first,
and paradigmatic sacrifice, for all future sacrifices in the biblical Sanctuary and Temple.28 In later Temple times, Jews also ate parts of the festival offering, a second sacrifice that they brought to the Temple, at the
Seder meal. Since we have had neither animal sacrifices nor the Temple
in Jerusalem for close to two thousand years, by tradition, the participants take part in a sumptuous feast that is to contain at least two cooked
foods, one for each of the sacrifices that was eaten.29 This accounts for
some peoples custom to eat a hard-boiled egg at this point in the meal,
a cooked food, representing the festival sacrifice, in addition to whatever
is served as the regular main course, standing in for the Paschal sacrifice.
12. Tzafun
Eating the matza of the afikoman, previously
hidden away during Yaatz
In the biblical story, it was only on the night of Passover that Moses
was able to fulfill the mission for which he was commissioned by God
at the burning bush: Now go, and I will send you to Pharaoh and take
out My people, the Jewish people, from Egypt (Ex. 3:10). Thus, at this
26. Ex. 1:14: And they embittered their lives with mortar and brick.
27. Ex. 12:8: Eat the meat during the night roasted over fire. Eat it with matza and bitter
herbs.
28. In Sefer Korbanot (Book of Sacrifices) in Maimonides compendium of Jewish Law,
the Mishneh Torah, the Laws of the Passover Sacrifice are the first that are codified. See
also the chapter later in this book on Sacred Space and particularly the interpretation
of the meaning of the Sacrificial Altar in the outer courtyard of the biblical Sanctuary.
29. According to Rav Yosef s interpretation of the Mishna, found in Pesaim 114b.
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point in the Seder, the afikoman, the matza that was wrapped up and
hidden during Yaatz (the fourth step in the Seder), is now unwrapped
and consumed by the Seder participants, representatives of the beneficiaries of Moses mission as he was about to lead them out of Egypt.30
13. Barekh
Reciting the traditional Grace After Meals
In the biblical story, Pharaoh comes running to Moses after the plague
of the firstborns, urging him to lead his people out. Then, almost as
an afterthought, Pharaoh adds, And you (plural) should bless me too
(Ex. 12:32). The biblical narrative implies that the Jews were blessing,
singing the praises, not of Pharaoh of course, but of their God, who
had brought the tenth plague and finally liberated them from Egyptian
bondage. Thus, the Seder participants reenact their blessing by reciting
the Grace After Meals in which God is praised in the first and second
paragraphs for the sumptuous meal we have just eatenand for taking
us out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage.
After reciting the Grace, the blessing over the third cup of wine is
recited, setting the stage for the next key chapter of redemption in the Book
of Exodus: Gods promise to redeem the people with an outstretched arm
and with great judgments, that is, with the splitting of the sea (Ex. 6:6).
14. Hallel
Reciting psalms of praise
In the biblical story, after he released the Jewish people from captivity, Pharaoh had second thoughts about his decision and decided to
pursue them with his cavalry and chariots, drawing near to them as
they were encamped at the Sea of Reeds. The people were terrified at
the approach of Pharaohs army. Moses, in turn, prayed to God for the
30. As the Haggada states emphatically in the chapter after the recitation of the Four
Questions: Had The Holy One, Blessed Be He, not taken our ancestors out of Egypt,
then we, and our children, and all of our descendants would still be enslaved to
Pharaoh in Egypt.
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peoples deliverance. The prayer of Pour Out Your Wrath, which is
recited immediately following the third cup of wine, is meant to reflect
Moses prayer at the shore of the sea.31 God then instructed Moses to
stretch out his arm with his staff in hand (symbolizing Gods royal scepter), and split the sea so that the people could escape Pharaoh by fleeing
on dry land to the other side. When Pharaohs legions followed, God
instructed Moses to stretch out his arm again to bring back the waters,
thus drowning the Egyptian army. In response to these miraculous events
witnessed by the entire nation, the people, led by Moses, broke out in a
song of praise that is called the Song of the Sea (Ex. 15).
To reenact that song of praise at the Passover Seder, the participants also break out in singing psalms of praise known as the Hallel.
Apparently understanding that the role of the Hallel is to be a stand-in
for the Song of the Sea, the Talmud states that the first Hallel was sung
by the people after the splitting of the sea (Pesaim 117a). The Haggada
then adds other songs of praise, instantiations of Hallel (Ps. 136 and
the Nishmat prayer, usually recited on the Sabbath and holidays during
the morning service), each of which gives prominence to the deliverance from the Egyptians at the Sea of Reeds. At the conclusion of these
prayers of praise, the blessing over the fourth cup of wine is recited, setting the stage for Gods fulfillment of the fourth promise of redemption:
And I will take them to be My people and I will be their God (Ex. 6:7).
15. Nirtza
Concluding the Seder with a prayer that God accept our reenactment
of the Exodus and redeem the Jewish people once again
The word Nirtza, the final step in the fifteen-part Seder, means acceptance. In the biblical story, already at the burning bush, when Moses
was first commissioned to lead the people out of Egypt, God told him to
bring the people to the very mountain on which God revealed Himself
to Moses: And this will be the sign that I sent you: When you take the
people out of Egypt you [collectively] will worship Me on this mountain
31. See Leading the Passover Journey, 138141, to understand how the wording of this
prayer reflects Moses prayer at the sea.
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Passover
(Ex. 3:12). This was to be the moment when God formally accepted the
people as His nation, and the people accepted upon themselves the
kingship of God. And so it was. God offered the people the covenant
(Ex. 19:36), the people accepted (Ex. 19:7, 8; 24:7), and they were supposed to live happily ever after as husband and wife in covenantal bliss.
Except that forty days later, the people, believing that Moses,
Gods emissary, had abandoned them, created and worshiped the Golden
Calf, a stunning betrayal of their loyalty to God and their covenantal
commitment (Ex. 32:7, 8). As happened with Noah and his family, God
was prepared to start human history all over again, this time beginning
with Moses progeny, but Moses would have none of it (Ex. 32:9, 10, 31,
32). He argued with God until God relented and forgave the people,
after they displayed true remorse (Ex. 33:610).
To test their sincerity, God commanded the people to build a
home in which His presence could dwell in their very midst. The people
were overjoyed at being given a second chance, and with great enthusiasm built the Mishkan to house Gods presence. In the last five verses of
the Book of Exodus, Gods presence indeed revealed itself and filled the
Mishkan that the people built. At this moment, there was NirtzaGods
acceptance of the people, imperfect though they were, and the peoples
true acceptance of God, despite their earlier indiscretions. This was
the moment of spiritual redemption for the people because, conscious
of their deficiencies, they were nevertheless made to feel worthy by
Gods presence coming to dwell among them. Hence, the Seder ends
with Nirtza, reenacting that redemptive moment when Gods presence
came to dwell among the Jewish people and to accompany them on all
their future journeys (Ex. 40:3438; see Appendix 2 for an outline of
the Seders fifteen steps of redemption).
WHERE IS MOSES IN THE HAGGADA?

Moses plays a central role throughout the biblical story that the Passover
Seder and the Haggada reenact. It is therefore rather strange that in the
Haggadas narrative of the story, Moses name appears only once,32 and
32. In the Ashkenazic Haggada; in the Sephardic version Moses name does not appear
even that one time.
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that it is only in an obscure, secondary role, as a proof text for another
point that the Haggada is making.33 Why is Moses virtually invisible
in the Haggada?
To understand why Moses is hidden in the Haggadas retelling of
the Exodus story, why he is tzafun, we have to turn to two events in the
Book of Exodus. First, when the people, after leaving Egypt, journey in
the desert and run out of food, they come running to Moses and Aaron
to complain. Strikingly, the people ask them accusingly why they took
the people out of Egypt if they were fated to perish thirty days later of
starvation in the desert. Moses parries their complaints by assuring them
that God would provide food for them and rebukes them, insisting that
their complaints be directed against God (Ex. 16:3, 7, 8), for who are
we that you lodge your complaints against us (Ex. 16:7).
Apparently, Moses understood that there was some confusion
among the people about who actually took them out of Egypt. Later on,
in the events that led up to the Golden Calf, the people said to Aaron,
Make us a god that will lead us, for this man, Moses, who took us out of
Egypt, we do not know what has become of him (Ex. 32:1). Apparently,
here too, in even starker form, the people seem to believe that Moses is
the divine being who took them out of Egypt.
For this reason, the participants of the Seder, who imagine themselves on the night of Passover as having been themselves liberated from
Egypt,34 leave Moses out of the story. His role in the Exodus is minimized
so that Gods role is maximized in the retelling. This is also why Elijah
makes an unexpected appearance in the story prior to the prayer Pour
Out Your Wrath (the placeholder for Moses prayer to God at the sea).
Elijah is invoked to represent Moses in disguise. Elijah was the angry
prophet of God who, like Moses, had a revelation at Mount Horeb/
Sinai and who faced down the idolaters of his generation (I Kings 1819).
Just as Moses had to wear a mask after he came down from Mount
33. In the proof text cited by R. Yose HaGelili in the Maggid section for how many
plagues occurred at the sea, citing the verse: And they believed in God and in His
servant Moses (Ex. 14:31).
34. As the Haggada says toward the end of Maggid: In every generation, each person
is to see himself as if he left Egypt.
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Sinai with the second set of tablets containing the Ten Commandments,
so that the people would not be blinded by his radiant presence
(Ex.34:2935), in the Haggada he must also be masked, hidden, disguised as Elijah, so that his radiant visage does not blind the Seder
participants to Gods presence.
The point and purpose of Passover, the first of the years biblical
holidays, and its reliving of the biblical events that it commemorates, is
to firmly anchor the peoples relationship with God. It is to remember
Gods redemption of the Jewish people when no human being, not even
as great a miracle worker as Moses,35 could or would rescue them. As
the author of the Haggada states at the beginning of Maggid: If The
Holy One, Blessed Be He, had not taken us out of Egypt, then we, and
our children, and our childrens children would still be enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt. Moses is made virtually invisible to instill in us today an
attitude of gratitude to God for His redemption. We rendezvous with
God, as God rendezvoused with our ancestors. That attitude of indebtedness finds expression in our peoples loyalty to God and Gods Torah
whose story and reenactment have sustained our people for thousands
of years. We are only Jews today because of those saving events of three
millennia ago and because of the Torahs story of those events, which
has been passed down to us from generation to generation.
AND WHERE IS THE LAND OF ISRAEL?

In the biblical narrative, the promise made to Abraham was not merely
that God would redeem his descendants from captivity and punish their
oppressors, but that God would return Abrahams descendants to the
Land of Israel (Gen. 15:1321). Indeed, consistent with that promise and
Gods memory of it, there was a fifth promise of redemption that God
made to Moses, found in the Book of Exodus immediately following
the first four promises of redemption mentioned previously: And I
will bring you to the land which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
that I would give itand I will give it to them as an inheritance in
perpetuityI, the EverPresent God (Ex. 6:8).
35. See the epitaph to Moses in Deut. 34:1112.
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Despite this fifth biblical promise, in the retelling of the story
of Passover in the Haggada and as part of the Seder, this promise is left
out.36 The author of the Haggada, living after the destruction of the
Second Temple and the exile of most of the Jewish people from the
Land of Israel, could not include this promise, which was unfulfilled
for them and for roughly nineteen centuries of Jews afterward. There
was only a hint to the fifth promise in the Cup of Elijah that sat at the
center of the Seder table. That cupnamed after the prophet who not
only resembled Moses but who, according to the later prophet Malachi, was also to herald the future redemption of the Jewish people and
their return to their ancestral land (Mal. 3:2324)was traditionally
not drunk at the Seder because its promise had not been fulfilled for so
many centuries of Jewish life.
Perhaps now that nearly half of the worlds Jews have returned
over the past century to reinhabit their ancestral homeland, this cup
mayperhaps shouldbe drunk at the Seder.37 The most appropriate
time to do so might be at the very end of the Seder before singing Next
Year in Jerusalem, in recognition and gratitude for Gods fulfilling the
promise to Abraham in our parents, and in our, generation. Coming,
as it does, after the participants have already drunk four cups of wine
and may be edging toward intoxication, the fifth cup of Elijah could
be shared among all the Seder participants. This taste of redemption
would convey the reality that although a substantial portion of the Jewish people has returned to the Promised Land, a substantial portion
has not, nor is the biblical dream of a rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem yet
a reality. So the redemption which we have been privileged to witness
and experience is not complete.
36. It is also left out of the core of Maggid, the paragraph of Arami oved avithe pilgrims declaration recited as he brings the first fruits to Jerusalem, upon which the
Haggada weaves an elaborate midrash (as per the instructions of Mishna Pesaim
10:4). In the Haggada, the pilgrims formulation is truncated and does not include
the verse, And He brought me to this place, and He gave us this land, a land flowing
with milk and honey (Deut. 26:9).
37. Maimonides rules that a fifth cup may be drunk; however, he suggests doing so
prior to reciting Psalm 136, the Great Hallel (Mishneh Torah, Laws of ametz and
Matza 8:10).
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This sharing of the cup of Elijah would also point to a cautionary
tale from the prologue to the story of the Exodus: a lack of fraternal solidarity, between Joseph and his brothers, is what led to the enslavement
of the Jewish people in the first place. Therefore, only by sharing this cup
of redemption in communal solidarity will the Land of Israel under Jewish sovereignty remain an inheritance in perpetuity as God promised.38
THE Timeless ETHICAL VALUES OF THE EXODUS

In addition to recalling and reliving the Exodus on Passover night,
ethical norms emerged from the narrative through which the Jewish
people imitated Gods redemptive actions in the Exodus year-round.
And this model of imitatio Dei developed in the Jewish tradition for
all the Jewish holidays so that the peoples relationship to God as
human beings created in Gods image, or of spouse to spouse (I will
take them to be My people and I will be their God [Ex 6:7]), would
be plain for all to see.
These dynamics resemble those of intimate human relationships.
As two people come together to become a we instead of two separate
Is, they share their most intimate selves with each other and begin to
act more and more like a single unit. After many years of a successful
marriage, people sometimes begin to resemble each other physically,
unconsciously mimicking each others language, facial expressions, and
even gait. More importantly, in their dealings with both their own children and with the outside world, they unite in a common front on issues
of principle and deep-seated values. So too, the marital relationship
between God and the Jewish people shaped the ethics of the latter to
closely resemble the ethical actions of the divine partner.
The Jewish tradition legislated a slew of ethical values and
actions that emulated Gods redemptive acts when He took the Jewish
people out of slavery, estrangement, and impoverishment. The first
such value is the mitzva of pidyon shevuyim, the ransoming/freeing of
endangered Jews from slavery or captivity, about which Maimonides
38. And I will give it to them as an inheritance in perpetuity, I the EverPresent God
(Ex. 6:8). See also the brief discussion of the modern holiday of Yom Yerushalayim
( Jerusalem Day) in chapter 8 of this volume entitled, The Hiddenness of God.
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says, There is no greater commandment.39 The Book of Leviticus
mandates that Jews should redeem their relatives who have been
forced to sell themselves into slavery to a non-Jew, connecting that
command to Gods actions at the Exodus: For it is to Me that the
Jewish people are servants, they are My servants whom I freed from
the Land of Egypt, I am the Lord your God (Lev. 25:55).40 Leviticus,
in effect, has God saying: As I redeemed you when you were held in
captivity as slaves in Egypt, you should redeem each other when you
are enslaved or held captive.41
Second, in Exodus, God instructs Moses to command the Jewish people to request from the Egyptians gold, silver, and fine clothes
before they leave Egypt (a token payback, presumably, for the hundreds
of years of free slave labor that accrued to the Egyptians). Hence, they
leave Egypt with the spoils that God had promised Abraham hundreds
of years earlier in the Covenant between the Pieces when God first
informed him of his descendants enslavement and liberation.42 Just
as the Jewish people were freed from slavery in Egypt, endowed with
some of their former masters wealth, the Torah mandated both that
Jewish servants be freed from their Jewish masters after six years and
that, upon their release, they be endowed with a material dowry upon
39. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Gifts to the Poor 8:10.
40. Although the primary obligation still falls on the relatives, Maimonides later extends
the obligation to all Jews (not only relatives) to free a fellow Jew who has sold himself
into slavery to a non-Jew. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Slaves 2:7.
41. This reinforces the point that God made in the first of the Ten Commandments. In
the opening speech God identifies Himself to the Jewish people, not as the Creator
of the world, but as the one who has freed them from the Land of Egypt from the
house of bondage. Gods very identity by which He makes Himself known to the
Jewish people is as the one who freed them from captivity and slavery. In imitatio
Dei, the Jewish people are therefore commanded to do the same. See also Shabbat
133b; Sifrei on Deut. 10:12; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Ethics 1:6 and Guide
for the Perplexed I:54.
42. Gen. 15:1314. This promise was itself a reward for Abrahams refusing to sully his
rescue of Lot from captivity by accepting the booty of his military victory. God
therefore promises that Abrahams descendants will benefit from the wealth that
Abraham refused to take for himself. In both of these cases, Abrahams actions in
Genesis can be seen as the precursor to Gods actions in Exodus, which the Jewish
people are commanded to emulate in subsequent books of the Torah.
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which to rebuild their lives.43 In addition, Jewish masters are enjoined
by the Torah to treat their Jewish servants as hired laborers and not to
work them oppressivelythe very word used to describe the slave
labor of the Jews in Egypt.44 The Exodus taught the Jewish people to
be the opposite of their Egyptian oppressors.
Third, in addition to being held as slaves in Egyptian captivity, the
Jews in Egypt experienced the suffering and travail of being strangers in
a foreign country. Therefore, the Torah commands the Jewish people to
be constantly vigilant and solicitous of the legal rights and the economic
and emotional needs of the stranger and other vulnerable populations
such as orphans and widows.45 In fact, more ethical commandments
are explicitly connected by the biblical text to the experience of slavery
and the subsequent Exodus from Egypt than to any other biblical event,
including the oft-quoted revelation at Sinai. Time after time, the Bible
commands us to remember the events of the Exodus that expressed
Gods compassion for the Jewish people, and to behave compassionately
and morally as a result.
It should be noted that the command to remember the past in
order to identify and empathize with those downtrodden in the present is not, as might be thought, directed to the individual to recall an
event that he or she personally experienced. Rather it is directed at the
individual and the nation as a whole, to recall the event experienced
collectively by their Jewish ancestors, and motivated by that vicarious
memory to act empathetically and ethically. In other words, most uses
of the term remember in the Bible refer to remembering our ancestors
story about which we were told, and creatively reimagining those events
as our own memories. Creative imagination sparked by the biblical
narrative is at the heart of the Jewish religious enterprise.46
43. Ex. 21:2; Deut. 15:15.
44. Cf. Lev. 25:3943 to Ex. 1:1314.
45. See, for instance, Lev. 19:3336; Deut. 10:19; 24:1722.
46. This is why the main text of the section of Maggid, which was recited each year by the
pilgrim bringing his first fruits to the Jerusalem Temple, starts from the imaginative
first person singularMy father was a fugitive from Aram (making the patriarch
Abraham or Jacob in effect his own father) moves to the first person pluraland
God took us out of Egyptand brought us to this land (making the Exodus and the
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It could not be otherwise for a religion that posits an invisible
God, whose presence became manifest to the Jewish people millennia ago and has not since been publicly, overtly witnessed. By retelling
the saga of our ancestors experiences and journeys from generation
to generation, these events and Gods redemptive presence in these
events come alive. Imagined and remembered in this creative fashion,
they become realso real, that as the Haggada says in Maggid, In every
generation, each person is to see himself as if he left Egypt. It is this
memory that is the basis for the peoples identity, ethical values, and
religious ritual.
REMEMBERING THE EXODUS YEAR-ROUND:

RITUALS AND LITURGY
The redemptive events in the Bible for which we celebrate the biblical
holidays are so pivotal and foundational in the Jewish story that they
shape not only our ethics but also our rituals year-round. There are three
major rituals in Jewish life that emerge from the Exodus and overflow
to the rest of the Jewish year: the life-cycle ceremony of pidyon haben
(the redemption of the firstborn son), the daily donning of tefillin (phylacteries), and the weekly celebration of Shabbat.
Since God saved the firstborn males of the Jewish people when
He slew the Egyptian firstborns on the night of the Exodus, all firstborn
maleshuman and animalare considered to belong to God (Ex. 13:1,
1115). As God redeemed them, we redeem our firstborn male children from God, by giving Gods representative, the priest, a symbolic
monetary sum of five silver coins. This symbolic life-cycle event is representative of all other firsts in the natural world that the Torah mandates we offer God, from the first grains (Lev. 23:10, 17), to the first bit
of dough that we knead when we bake bread (Num. 15:1721), to the
first fruits of the land that we bring from the holiday of Shavuot through
original settlement of the land something of which he was a part as a member of the
collective Jewish people), and then back to the real first person singular: And now I
have brought these first fruits of the land that God has given to me. By internalizing
the story of the Jewish peoples past into his own identity, the pilgrim internalized
the lessons of previous generations and made them his own, year in and year out.
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the holiday of Sukkot (Deut. 26:111). By offering these firsts to God,
we acknowledge that all of our fecundity and growth are ultimately the
result of Gods loving-kindness and beneficence.
While the redemption of the firstborn is a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity, the wearing of phylacteries, tefillin, is a daily one. The biblical command to wind the tefillin around ones arms and hands and
place them upon the top of ones forehead is traditionally directed to
Jewish males on weekdays. The rituals of redeeming the firstborn and
of wearing phylacteries are commanded together, immediately following the account of the slaying of the Egyptian firstborn males and the
Exodus from Egypt. Both are explicitly linked to Gods redeeming the
Jewish people from Egypt with a strong hand (Ex. 13:9, 10, 16). God
took the people out of Egypt with a strong hand and therefore Jews
bind the tefillin on the muscle of their arms and around their hand. In
so doing, they symbolically bind their own energies and direct their
hearts and minds to God.47
There is a knot on both the hand and head tefillin symbolizing
that the Jewish people are inextricably knotted together with God in
covenant. This covenantal relationship is reinforced by the number of
timesseventhat the arm tefillin are wound around the forearm. The
number seven symbolizes the Jewish covenant with God (reflected, for
example, in the observance of the Sabbath on the seventh day of each
weekEx. 31:1617). The arm tefillin are also wound tightly around the
hand forming and imprinting on ones skin the letters shin, dalet, and
yudto form the word Shaddai, one of Gods names.48 This specific
name of God is mentioned in the story of the Exodus as the name by
which God revealed Himself to the patriarchs of the Jewish people.49 The
47. The black box of the tefillin wrapped around the arm, containing the four places in
the Torah that the commandment of tefillin is iterated, is placed facing the heart. The
placement symbolizes the keeping of the covenant with all of ones heart (Deut. 6:49).
The second box of tefillin, worn on the head, is placed in between and above the eyes.
48. Often translated as Almighty. This name of God is usually correlated in the Bible
with Gods blessings of fecundity and fruitfulnessone of the two blessings, along
with the land, that God bestowed upon the patriarchs, and that fueled the prolific
growth of the twelve tribes to become a veritable nation in Egypt.
49. Ex. 6:3; Gen. 17:1, 28:3, 35:11.
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imprint of Gods name on the hand each morning may be why the Torah
calls the hand tefillin an ot (Deut. 6:8, 11:18), which literally means a
letter but has come to mean more loosely, a sign of the peoples distinct relationship with God.
In addition to tightly binding ones arms and strength to God
Almighty in covenant, there is, if you will, royal symbolism to donning
the head tefillin. The head tefillin, secured by a leather strap, is reminiscent of the crown worn by the Pharaoh of the Exodus, Rameses II, as
evidenced by the extraordinary remains found at the Temple of Abu
Simbel.50 The difference, of course, is that instead of having a golden serpent at its apex, which in Egyptian lore was the symbol of the Pharaohs,51
the crown of the head tefillin is a box containing four biblical chapters
and adorned by the two shin letters on the outsidea three-stemmed
shin on one side and a four-stemmed shin on the other.52
The head tefillin/crown symbolizes the royal status of the Jewish
people as Gods covenanted people: a kingdom of priests and a holy
people (Ex. 19:6). Like the High Priest in the biblical Sanctuary, who
wore a headband around his forehead the entire time that he ministered,
imprinted in gold with the words Holy to God (Ex. 28:36), all Jewish
males traditionally wear a headband during morning prayers with the
first letter of Gods name Shaddai embossed on both the left and right
sides. This is why the head tefillin are referred to in the rabbinic tradition
as embodying the verse: For the peoples of the earth will see that Gods
name is placed upon you and they will be in awe of you (Deut. 28:10).53
Despite their royal symbolism, which might lead wearers to a
sense of self-aggrandizement, one might view the tefillin in quite the
50. See the photo of the twin statues of Rameses II in The Archaeological Haggada (Adama
Books, 1992), 25.
51. See Ezek. 29:3, in which Pharaoh is referred to as the the large serpent.
52. Aside from the seven stems, whose number again symbolizes the Jewish covenant
with God, the two shin letters are reminiscent of the male and female cherubs with
their wings spread that sat above the Holy Ark, of which the tefillin are supposed
to remind us, I believe, in miniature. The two shin letters are so designed that the
three-stemmed shin and the four-stemmed shin could embrace and intertwine as
could the male and female cherubs, symbolizing God and the Jewish people, above
the Ark in the Holy of Holies (see Yoma 54a).
53. Berakhot 6a on the verse from Deut. 28:10.
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opposite way, as a compensatory mechanism, which God graciously
gave the Jewish people to build up their self-esteem. Hundreds of years
as slaves under the brutal oppression of Pharaoh left the Jewish people
with a deeply embedded negative self-image. The recurring anxiety and
frequent whining of the generation that left Egypt give ample testimony
to their fragile self-concept. Crowning them through the wearing of
tefillin was designed to help redress that downtrodden sense of self and
make all Jews feel as if they came from a proud lineage and were now
part of the royal household of the King of kings.
Although thousands of years have passed since the Exodus from
Egypt, the persecutions of the Jewish people in every generation54 and
the absence of Gods overt and palpable presence through most of Jewish history have made it continuously challenging for the Jewish people
to remain steadfast in their identity and in their positive sense of themselves as Gods beloved people. The tefillin today, no less than three
thousand years ago, still serve their original function of binding each
individual Jew to God and giving each person a positive self-concept
of being cherished by God.
The third major ritual associated with the Exodus that overflows
into the whole year is the weekly observance and celebration of Shabbat, which also recalls our enslavement and redemption from Egypt.
Like the tefillin and the mark of circumcision,55 Shabbat in the Bible is
called an ot, a symbol of the covenant between God and the Jewish
people. In the second iteration of the Ten Commandments, the Jews are
bidden to give their servants rest on Shabbat because of their memory
of having been slaves in Egypt and then freed by God from bondage
(Deut. 5:1415). As we will see in chapter 7, Shabbat picks up this idea
of remembering our redemption from slavery and makes it one of the
two pillars on which we base that day of rest and relationship, every
week of the year.
54. The Haggada tells us in Maggid, as we raise the toast to God: In every generation,
there are those who have risen up against us to annihilate us. But The Holy One,
Blessed Be He, has saved us from their hands.
55. Although the circumcision ceremony and commandment goes back to Abraham
(Gen. 17:914), the Torah attaches it to the story of the Exodus by making it a
prerequisite for eating the Paschal sacrifice (Ex. 12:4350).
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Liturgically, we therefore recall the Exodus in the recitation of
Kiddush on Friday nights as part of our observance of Shabbat. As the
Torah commands,56 the Exodus is also remembered every single day
through the recitation of the closest thing Judaism has to a creedthe
Shemarecited daily both in the mornings and evenings.57 We recall the
Exodus in the closing verse of the third and final section of the Shema,
making it the final thought with which we leave its recitation, thereby
highlighting its importance.58
Front-loading the memory of the Exodus through the Kiddush
recited weekly at the beginning of the first Shabbat meal and backloading it as the concluding verse of the Shema recited twice daily
is the way we assign the Exodus its special place in Jewish memory
and liturgy.
THE SEVENTH PASSOVER DAY:

REMEMBERING THE SPLITTING OF THE SEA
Although the splitting of the sea was recalled at the Seder on the first
night of Passover, the Torah gave the event its own sacred day of commemoration. Heres why. After the Jews left Egypt, they journeyed
into the desert and the ancient Egyptians pursued them. The Egyptian
intent was either to reenslave them or to annihilate them. Seven days
later, as recorded in chapters 14 and 15 of Exodus, as the Egyptian army
was about to overtake the defenseless Jewish masses, God split the Sea
of Reeds, saved the Jewish people, and drowned the Egyptian legions
before their very eyes. In so doing, Gods redemptive presence again
became patently manifest to the entire Jewish people. In other words,
the second revelation of the Divine Presence before the people took
place at the sea:
56. In order that you shall remember the day that you left Egypt all the days of your
life (Deut. 16:3).
57. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Reciting the Shema 1:1.
58. Ibid., 1:3. The relevant passage recited is: I am the EverPresent, your God, who
took you out of the land of Egypt to be your God, I am the EverPresent, your God
(Num. 15:41). The question of whether this section of the Shema should be recited
at night is the subject of the discussion in the Haggada near the beginning of
Maggid between R. Elazar b. Azaria and the rabbinic sages.
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Thus the EverPresent God saved Israel that day from the hand
of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the
seashore. And Israel saw the great hand that the EverPresent
God wrought against Egypt and the people were awed by the
EverPresent God and believed in the EverPresent God and in
His servant Moses. (Ex. 14:3031)
On that day, in an emotional response to their deliverance, Moses and
the Jewish people sang the Song of the Sea. Although the Bible does
not specify that the splitting of the sea took place on the seventh day
following the Exodus, it brilliantly suggests it with the parallel language and plot line to the story of Israel/Jacob, the Jewish peoples
patriarchal ancestor and archetype, fleeing from servitude to Laban and
being rescued by God. There (Gen. 31), the Bible tells us that Laban
overtook Jacob and his camp on the seventh day following his flight.
The Jewish tradition therefore concludes that the Egyptians overtook
the Israelitescompelling God to save them by splitting the seaon
the seventh day after the Jews left Egypt.
That miraculous, redemptive event at the sea, witnessed by all the
people, is why the seventh day of Passover is a sacred holiday and why,
liturgically, the Song of the Sea is included in the liturgy for the day as
part of the Torah portion read in synagogue. It is also part of the reason
why, throughout Passover, during the morning prayers, we sing parts of
Hallel, which were first sung, according to the rabbis, after the splitting
of the sea.59 Recollecting and c elebrating the rescue at the sea on the
seventh day of Passover fulfills Moses charge to the Jewish people in
the Book of Deuteronomy:
You shall surely remember what the EverPresent, your God, did
to Pharaoh and all the Egyptians: the wondrous acts that you
saw with your own eyes, the signs and the miracles, the mighty
hand, and the outstretched arm by which the EverPresent, your
God, liberated you. Thus will the EverPresent God do to all the
peoples you now fear. (Deut. 7:1819)
59. Pesaim 117a. See also the Hallel section of the Seder, above.
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As pointed out earlier, the mighty hand and outstretched arm is arefer
ence to the miracles at the sea.60 If the purpose of the Exodus from Egypt
was to free the Jewish people from slavery, the purpose for the splitting
of the sea was to free them from fear and anxiety, both of the Egyptian
armies and the Canaanite armies, whom they anticipated soon facing.61
Thus, the revelation of Gods presence to the Jewish people at the sea was
certainly worthy of being remembered and retold for future generations
on its own special day, the seventh day of Passover.
To mark the conclusion of this final day of Passover, the custom
of holding a seuda shel Mashia, a festive meal anticipating the arrival of
the Messiah, which originated in hasidic circles in the nineteenth century,
has gained wider currency in recent years among both traditional and
non-traditional Jews. The basis for the custom is that the redemption
of the Jewish people from Egypt and at the Sea of Reeds, for which we
celebrate Passover, presages the final redemption of the Jewish people in
the Messianic Age. This festive concluding meal of Passover which bookends the Seder meal of the holidays opening night, is often celebrated
communally and incorporates many of the Seders elements, including
singing songs, telling stories of redemption, eating matza, and drinking
(four cups of!) wine. It has become a meaningful way for the community to bid farewell to this foundational holiday, which celebrates the
memory of, and hope for, redemption.
INTERNALIZING GODS REVELATION AT THE SEA

The miraculous events at the sea found ethical expression in the Torahs
mandate that the Jewish people imitate Godwho rescued them from
being reenslaved by their former Egyptian taskmastersby offering safe
sanctuary to runaway slaves in both their individual homes and in their
communities (Deut. 23:1617). This law ran against the nearly universal rule in the ancient Near East under which escaped slaves had to be
returned to their masters, usually under penalty of death, and bounty
60. See above, my explanation for the third cup, and Leading the Passover Journey, 136137,
for why Gods outstretched arm refers to the splitting of the sea.
61. Therefore, part of the song is devoted to the fear instilled in the Canaanites because
of the miracles of the sea. Ex. 15:1417.
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Passover
hunters were rewarded for these slaves return.62 Again, we see here
the power of imitatio Dei in the Bible: God came to the defense of fleeing slaves and expected the same of the people created in Gods image,
who carried Gods name into the world. Indeed today, the Jewish state
provides asylum to individual refugees who flee to Israel out of genuine
danger to life and limb, while Diaspora Jewry, through their financial
contributions, helps support the costs of resettlement for these refugees
within Israel or in another safe country.
The events at the sea were so powerful that they also dramatically impacted Jewish liturgy for all time. The Song of the Sea and the
verses describing the events leading up to it are recited not only on the
seventh day of Passover but every single day in the morning prayers as
part of the Verses of Song (Pesukei DeZimra) which precede the call
to prayer (Barekhu). The belief in a God who is capable of rescue and
redemption, and to whom we offer our silent devotional prayer each day,
is rooted in the retelling of the rescue at the sea. That retelling is therefore also alluded to daily in both the morning and evening blessings of
the Shema which precede the Amida (Shemoneh Esreh) and conclude
with Blessed are You God, the Redeemer of Israel.63 Belief in Gods
redemptive power as evidenced by the events at the sea is a sine qua non
for praying for Gods deliverance and redemption today.
Finally, existentially, commemorating the seventh duty of Passover as sacred because of the Jewish peoples rescue at the sea embodies
the challenge for Jews and for all human beings to live free from fear.
Human beings who are constantly anxious about their ability to survive
are, in a sense, enslaved. To be truly free of that pervasive anxiety that
is part and parcel of the human condition, one needs some sort of deep,
internal assurance that ones basic survival needs will be metthat in
62. See Laws of Hammurabi 1620; Hittite Laws 2224; and Marc Brettler and
Adele Berlin, eds., The Jewish Study Bible (Oxford University Press, 2004), 419.
See also the impassioned argument of Rabbi Shai Held in his online commentary on Parashat Ki Tetzeh (2014), Why Runaway Slaves Are Like God: http://
myemail.constantcontact.com/Parashat-Ki-Teitzei---Rabbi-Shai-Held.html?soid=1
101789466973&aid=eBLt85D6x5M.
63. For this reason, in Jewish tradition there may not be an interruption between the
recitation of this blessing and the commencement of the Amida.
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Rendezvous with God

some way God, who our tradition teaches us is EverPresent, will provide. By rescuing our ancestors from the mighty legions of Egypt, God
provided testimony to that truth.
After several weeks in the desert, however, a new challenge
emerged: running out of food and potential starvation. Would the people
continue to trust in Gods ability to provide for an entire nation in the
midst of a barren wilderness? This led to the next revelation of Gods
presence to the people in the story of the manna, the focus of chapter 2.
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Rendezvous With God (Rabbi Nathan Laufer)

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Rendezvous With God (Rabbi Nathan Laufer)

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In this wondrous book, Nathan Laufer gives us a stunningly fresh reading of

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An important book, a work of exceptional depth, spirit, and faith. Rabbi

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Rendezvous with God

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Rabbi Nathan Laufer

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As for Me, this is My covenantsays the EverPresent

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hildren want to know from where they come. During the

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1. Each nations holidays commemorate and give expression to a formative event in

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The Jewish Peoples

he story of the birth of the Jewish people as a free nation and of

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How the Holidays Tell the Story

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The Structure of This Book

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How the Holidays Affect the Year

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Rendezvous with God:

Exodus from Egypt

Splitting of the sea

Pitcher and Basin,

Table with twelve

Ark, cherubs, Ten

Menora and olive oil,

Altars eternal flame,

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Passover: Leaving Egypt